- The municipality alleged residents stopped trucks and an excavator from reaching a sand extraction site and demanded R200 000 for access.
- The residents said extraction had been halted pending discussions with traditional structures and denied demanding money.
- Judge Reddy dismissed the municipality’s application because it failed to establish what each respondent had allegedly done.
Moses Kotane Local Municipality went to the High Court in Mahikeng seeking an urgent interdict against seven residents and an unidentified group it accused of disrupting its construction activities.
At the centre of the dispute was sand being extracted from a portion of the farm Rhenosterspruit at Mabele-a-Pudi for road rehabilitation at Mogwase Unit 8.
The municipality had appointed a contractor for the road project after receiving provincial infrastructure grants. According to municipal manager Mokopane Valtein Letsoalo, the contractor took possession of the site in December 2025.
The municipality said an earlier disruption involving two people who were not parties to the application had already resulted in an interdict on 22 May 2026. It alleged that a new group then targeted the sand extraction operation.
The group was said to be led by Tau Ephraim Nakedi, Bakang Tshenye, Kgomotso Tshenye, Shime Tshenye, Berlina Maropeng, Bashimane Maropeng and Dorah Ntwape, together with unidentified people associated with them.
According to the municipality, the confrontation came to a head on 18 June 2026 when the group prevented contractor trucks and an excavator from accessing the sand, blocked and offloaded sand that had already been loaded, and demanded R200 000 for access to the site.
The municipality asked Judge J Reddy to stop the respondents from restricting access to its sites, interfering with trucks and heavy equipment, disrupting housing, electricity, road, water and sanitation projects, and threatening or intimidating municipal employees and contractors.
Residents said the municipality was ignoring an agreement
Nakedi gave the court a markedly different version. He said the municipality had initiated engagement with the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela Traditional Council, the Royal Family and the Communal Property Association about the sand extraction.
According to Nakedi, a meeting on 4 May 2026 resulted in a resolution that extraction should stop pending a memorandum of understanding. When he discovered that extraction had continued, Nakedi said he approached the excavator operators to inform them of the position reached at the meeting. He denied confronting anyone or demanding money.
The municipality disputed his version, saying there was no binding mediation process and that its officials had confirmed they had not attended the meetings described by Nakedi.
The residents raised five preliminary objections to the municipality’s application, including that the dispute was still subject to mediation, that the founding affidavit had not been properly commissioned, that the Traditional Council should have been joined and that the application amounted to an abuse of court process. Judge J Reddy rejected all five.
Judge accepted the affidavit explanation
One of the objections concerned a discrepancy in the founding affidavit. The affidavit recorded that it had been signed and sworn at Mogwase, while the commissioner’s stamp reflected a business address in Hatfield, Pretoria, about 157km away.
The residents argued that this created an inference that the affidavit had not been signed in the commissioner’s presence. The municipality explained that the commissioner, an admitted attorney and ex officio commissioner of oaths, had travelled to Mogwase to commission the affidavit.
Judge Reddy accepted the explanation, finding that the requirements governing commissioners of oaths had been substantially complied with. “The regulations exist to guard against the substantive mischief of an affidavit never truly sworn,” Judge Reddy held, “not to erect a procedural obstacle divorced from that purpose.”
The judge also rejected the argument that the discussions with traditional structures prevented the municipality from approaching the High Court.
Although Nakedi’s account of the 4 May meeting was accepted for purposes of the preliminary objection, Judge Reddy found that the engagement was voluntary and informal and contained no binding agreement suspending the court’s jurisdiction.
The municipality also succeeded in establishing urgency. It relied on accumulating contractual penalties and the potential impact of delays on future grant funding.
Judge Reddy accepted that those consequences could not necessarily be remedied by waiting for a hearing in the ordinary course. But that was as far as the municipality’s success went.
Municipality’s biggest problem was its own affidavit
Judge Reddy found that the municipality had failed to establish the primary facts needed to justify an interdict against the named residents. The problem was that the municipality repeatedly referred to “the group” and then attributed the alleged conduct to all seven respondents collectively.
The papers did not say which respondent had blocked a truck, who had offloaded the sand or who had demanded R200 000. Judge Reddy stressed that conclusions about unlawful or disruptive conduct cannot replace the underlying facts that establish who actually did what.
“A conclusion that ‘the respondents’ disrupted construction activities is not itself a primary fact,” the judge held. “It is a conclusion offered in place of the facts from which it might be drawn.”
The municipality’s account of the events of 18 June also contained a further difficulty. It alleged that access had been denied to trucks while also alleging that sand was offloaded from those trucks. Even where the municipality provided more detail, however, it still attributed the conduct to “the group” rather than identifying individual respondents.
Nakedi’s own evidence exposed the distinction. He denied the municipality’s allegations but admitted that he personally approached the excavator operators. Judge Reddy noted that this was a specific allegation concerning Nakedi, whereas the municipality had not made equivalent allegations identifying what any of the other respondents had personally done.
Failure to identify individual conduct defeated interdict
Judge Reddy found that the problem went to the foundation of the municipality’s case and was not merely a drafting defect. An interdict against named individuals requires a factual basis for restraining those particular people from particular conduct.
“If the papers do not show which respondent did what, no proper case has been made out for an interdict against any of them individually,” Judge Reddy held. The unidentified eighth respondent presented an additional problem because its alleged conduct depended on the allegations made against the first seven respondents.
Judge Reddy found that the description of the eighth respondent as a group of unknown people also lacked the certainty ordinarily required when final interdictory relief is sought. Because the municipality had failed to establish a cause of action against the respondents, the judge found it unnecessary to consider the remaining requirements for an interdict.
Municipality ordered to pay residents’ costs
The first seven respondents had lost all five preliminary objections, but they ultimately succeeded where it mattered.
Judge Reddy dismissed the municipality’s application and ordered it to pay the first seven respondents’ costs on the party-and-party scale.
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