The Supreme Court of Appeal instructed 87 farmers to settle the amounts they owed the municipality. They were also ordered to pay the municipality's costs for the legal action taken to recover the arrears.
Rates were imposed on rural land in South Africa for the first time in 1993 under the Local Government Transition Act. The Act brought all land in the country under the jurisdiction of municipal councils.
The Bergrivier municipality started to impose levies and rates on all land-owners in the 2001/2002 financial year and subsequent years. However, a group of farm-owners refused to pay rates claiming that these were not in compliance with the Transition Act.
The complaints were all of a technical nature.
Over the years, the Transition Act, which allowed for the levying of rates, was replaced by four laws which now regulate local government.
The farm-owners argued that once the Local Government: Municipal Property Rates Act came into operation in 2005, the rating provision of the Transition Act ceased to apply.
However, the SCA held that the transitional provisions in the Rates Act, and in the Local Government: Municipal Finance Act had, since 2004, kept alive the provision of the Transition Act enabling rates to be levied until 2011.
The court found that the municipality had acted in terms of this provision and had complied with the procedures laid down in the Finance Act in the years after 2005.
The farm-owners' complaints over the requirements of the Rates Act not being met, and about minor flaws in the publication of rates resolutions and draft budgets, were held to be unfounded by the SCA.
The court dismissed an appeal by the farm-owners, but upheld a cross appeal by the municipality.
Source: Sapa via I-Net Bridge
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