General manager of communications for the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral), Vusi Mona said, “Upon investigation, we learnt that there were informal settlers inside the N1 road reserve, south of William Nicol Drive.”
“The N1 road reserve is the property of Sanral and when the road agency’s routine road maintenance contractor tried to move these settlers, they aggressively resisted,” said Mona. He told Sandton Chronicle the squatters had “no legal authority to effect a resisted removal”.
“We have approached the appropriate authorities within the Metro police to assist,” he added. There was an initial dispute between Sanral and the City of Johannesburg about who owned this specific land, however, the issue has been resolved and, according to the spokesperson for the City of Johannesburg, Thembelihle Radebe, 22 vagrants were removed from the site and 11 shacks were destroyed.
Radebe said the Metro police would continue to monitor the area.
