http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4069771

The Mercury

Court halts landlord's threats

October 08, 2007 Edition 2

BRONWYN GERRETSEN

Three Motala Heights residents are sleeping happily at night, secure in the knowledge that their landlord cannot bulldoze their homes.

They were recently granted an urgent interdict in the Durban High Court, which prevents their landlord, Ricky Govender, from making good on his promise to destroy their homes if they did not vacate them.

Govender has been trying to evict the residents from his land for the past five years as he wants to develop it. However, the residents claim they have nowhere to go as the government has not provided houses for them.

South Africa

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3806952
April 30, 2007 Edition 1

BRONWYN GERRETSEN

The ground was a mass of black ash, and the stench of burned flesh and charred debris filled the air at the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Durban yesterday, just hours after a fire destroyed 100 shacks and killed two people.

Residents believe the fire was started by a candle in a shack at the bottom of a hill on Saturday night. The blaze spread rapidly, engulfing the homes of more than 200 people and destroying everything but the clothes on their backs.

The two who died in the blaze were identified as Ephraime Phungula and Ben Mhlakwana, a 31-year-old mother of two - the youngest of whom is a 6-month-old baby.