- The properties could not legally be used as a school at the time of transfer.
- The City could not hide behind a voetstoots clause to escape its legal obligations.
- The City must regularise building plans, zoning and servitudes, and is barred from taking enforcement action in the interim.
A school that had operated for decades suddenly found itself facing enforcement action brought by the very municipality that had sold it the property without ever ensuring the buildings were legally compliant.
That contradiction lay at the heart of the dispute between Pretoria Educational Centre (Pty) Ltd and the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality in the High Court in Pretoria.
Pretoria Educational Centre had been running a school on five adjoining properties since the early 1990s. After years of litigation, the City finally transferred the properties in 2025. It did not take long for serious legal defects to surface. There were no approved building plans for any of the structures, and a municipal sewerage line ran beneath the buildings without a registered servitude.
Despite having been both the property owner and the regulatory authority at the time the buildings were constructed, the City then threatened enforcement action against the school for failing to comply with the very planning and building laws it had never applied to itself.
What the dispute was about
Pretoria Educational Centre approached the court to compel the City to rectify the legal status of the properties and to restrain it from taking enforcement action in the meantime. The school argued that the properties had been acquired for a single, specific purpose, to operate a school, and that this was simply impossible without the necessary approvals in place.
The City fell back on the voetstoots clause, arguing that the properties had been sold as is. It also claimed that the required approval under the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 had not been obtained, a position that sat uneasily with the sale agreements, which recorded that approval had in fact been granted.
What the court decided
The court found that there was no minor defect. Without approved building plans and with a sewer line running beneath the buildings without any registered servitude, the properties simply could not be lawfully used as a school. The City had clear legal duties under the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act 103 of 1977 to ensure compliance during construction, duties it had plainly failed to meet.
Because the properties were incapable of lawful use, the City had failed to deliver what had actually been agreed. In those circumstances, the voetstoots clause offered no protection. The defect was not physical but legal, and it struck at the very foundation of the agreement.
The court was equally clear that the school bore no responsibility for remedying a sewer line that the City itself had installed beneath the property without ever registering a servitude.
What the court ordered
The City was ordered to regularise the position in full. It must obtain approved building plans, complete rezoning and consolidation of the properties, register a proper sewer servitude, and issue the necessary occupation and planning certificates.
Until it has done so, the City is barred from taking any enforcement action against the school.
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