More than thirty informal homes in Ncera Village outside East London were demolished under the authority of a court order being carried out by the office of the sheriff.
This was after residents illegally erected informal structures on land owned by a traditional leader, Princess Nomaxhosa Jongilanga.
When the Daily Dispatch visited the site yesterday, villagers were collecting their zinc sheets and wood after a tractor-loaderbackhoe (TLB) had bulldozed several informal settlements.
Police, who had arrived in three vans, kept a highly visible presence, alongside officials from public order policing and Buffalo City's law enforcement unit.
A tearful mother of three who asked not to be named for fear of victimisation said she had lost everything she had built over the past year, in just a few minutes.
“It was early in the morning when we heard the sound of big cars close by.
“Before we knew it they were demolishing our neighbours’ homes. I'm heartsore; this is so painful. And to think that another woman is behind it makes it even worse.
“Where are my children going to sleep and what do we do with our stuff?”
The woman said she had moved into the shack late last year, after she and her husband relocated from Queenstown.
Shack builder Zithulele Klaas, 59, said he had received a phone call from a friend notifying him of what had happened.
“I don't live here, but I was building a shack for my brother-in-law, who has been living with us over the past few years,” he said.
Linda Maliwa said they had not received any notice about the evacuation.
However, Princess Nomaxhosa Jongilanga said the village had known about the court interdict from as early as 2017.
Documents seen by the Daily Dispatch emphasised how the community had agreed to preserve the land at a policy conference held on August 8 2015.
Jongilanga said they had agreed not to demarcate plots to people from outside the village and this position was tabled in the July 2017 chairperson's forum.
“After these discussions, that's when we found that there was rampant illegal occupation of land,” she said.
Jongilanga said they had applied for an interdict and were granted a temporary order which was made permanent on November 7, when there were no objections from the community.
“We have had several meetings with the community of the village and together with the ward committees signed a memorandum of understanding about the issue of demarcating land.
“Nobody can earmark plots without going past us and when we took the matter to court in 2017 nobody disputed it.
“Even when we went to the police to start implementing the court order, we were asked to give them two weeks notice, which we did, so now it's time for implementing,” she said...