RE: Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 07/04/18> Why do we celebrate the 4th of July anyway?
It is a sad state of affairs indeed!
Here in post apartheid South Africa there still is no freedom for many of the former oppressed; our leaders have enriched themselves and their families but the ordinary man in the street still live in horrendous conditions with a higher rate of unemployment and the gap between the rich and the poor getting bigger!
Further, our law system protects the criminals - if someone breaks into our home and threatens us, we would be arrested if we dare fire a shot at them or injure them in any way! We I do not own any firearms so that would not happen to us, but there have been many instances where victims of crime have had to go to court to defend themselves.
About land matters, an act was passed in 1998 called the Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land, which often is used by tenants to avoid paying rent (one reason we started Lily's Cottage and not get a tenant! My late brother had a tenant who only paid one month's rent, then stopped. Her lawyer threw this act at us after my brother's death; my poor brother was in such a state about this - he died suddenly after a heart attack, aged 42.
We were shocked to hear that we would be arrested if we tried removing her from the duplex! She lived there rent-free for the rest of the seven months it took for my brother's estate to be wound up! We sold the property and she agreed to move out if we signed a document absolving her of all the rental monies!
I heard many other horrendous stories about this issue.
Freedom it certainly is not!
So I will not be wishing you a happy 4th of July mr Papper after reading what you've written - and sorry I got carried away with my long story!
No apologies needed on the length of your reply, I enjoy reading others take on situations and their experiences. It is a shame about your brother. I find it interesting that they name the law as such "Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land".
It would seem that your brother's tenant had broken their contract with him and therefore would be subject to eviction. But upon further thought, (thinking like a gov. official) the tenant even though they have broken the contract has done nothing wrong, governments break the contracts with people all the time. The only time broken contracts need to enforced is when a person breaks a contract with the government, and those would be the "laws", so the person is charged, convicted and then forced to pay or in some cases incarcerated at the government hotel (jail).
The other interesting part is that the person could afford a lawyer to battle for them but couldn't pay the rent. Lawyers aren't cheap here, I don't know about where you are, but here I don't know that having a lawyer and winning in court would be any less expensive than paying the rent.
What would constitute a legal eviction where you are? If not paying the rent doesn't qualify I would have a hard time guessing what would. The other part would be the "unlawful occupation of land" , the probably has no teeth in it since we both know that there is a big difference between "legal" and "lawful" from prior discussions about law.
Here we have in Texas a statute called the "Castle doctrine", which says a mans home is his castle and he can defend his castle with deadly force if need be. There was actually a case here in the Houston area where an older gentleman saw his neighbors house being burglarized and grabbed his shotgun and went out and defended his neighbors property, killing one of three suspects. He did end up in court, but was not convicted of a crime. His saving grace in that case was that when he stopped them they were actually on his property in his front yard. If he had shot them in the neighbors yard in might have been a totally different outcome for him.
But according to the statute, we can defend our own property.