NewslettersReleased - 20 September 2011At last we have something to say....In this Newsletter: And so the saga continues....The battle to get our land claim into court continues. Having had a complete turnaround in May where we were simply postponed at the pleasure of the Court, we have spent a lot of time and effort in ensuring this doesn’t happen again. Fundamentally, we were in the hands of the claimants’ attorney and the RLCC. They have the responsibility to ensure that all the Court processes are completed. This included ensuring that ALL interested and affected parties were given the opportunity to participate in the Court action. This despite the fact everyone was given that same opportunity at the time of gazetting in 2004! So we decided to make sure that someone took the responsibility to get all the non participating land owners details. This was done by your committee as the total cost was a lot less than another postponement in court. So having decided in the interests of speed to ensure we had the correct information for all of them we passed this on to the claimants attorneys. The rationale for this was precedent set in another matter where you will recall they had several postponements caused by the lack of notification of all parties. This was of course at huge cost to the landowners association. The battle to get all the non members of the 26778 Land Claim Action Group served paper has hopefully been the last hurdle for us to overcome. I am pleased to say the first servicing from the claimants attorneys began three or four days ago.Non members are receiving three large box files of court documents along with a notification to participate. This means that the recipient is actually faced with three choices, viz:
Obviously we hope that the non members will select option 3. However the reality is that some may choose not to do so, and this could cause further delays. Hopefully if you know of someone who is facing this decision you will do all that you can to persuade them to join us. SMS ServiceAs part of this exercise we have erected a sign at the Amanzingwe gate asking all land owners to contact us by way of an SMS. If you are a member you can ignore this. However if your details are not accurate you could use this opportunity to update your records. This should provide an opportunity for those who haven’t worked with us to join the group and by so doing add critical mass to our efforts. Own more than one property?It must be remembered that every sub division within the parent farms have been claimed. This means that ALL subdivisions must be registered by the owners in terms of the Deeds Register. We have agreed that for those that own multiple properties we will apply a set of discounts, dependant on numbers. These are available on application. AGMWe are due to hold an AGM in October. We will send out notices as soon as a meeting date has been finalised. This AGM will be our sixth, can you believe it! Once again we will require nominations for the various committees. These forms are available on our web site and should be returned to the secretary at least fourteen days prior to the AGM. Hopefully we could have a final court date by then . . . .we are expecting a second pre trial conference to take place during October. I hope that the court date will be this year! In the meantime ‘vasbyt’ . . . progress is being made, albeit slowly. Kind regards Patrick Jonsson The opinions expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the Committee or of the appointed legal team.
"The power of the collective is far greater than the power of one"
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