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PAC calls for ban on sale of land to foreigners
Iol - South Africa
The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) urged parliament on Sunday to move swiftly and ban the sale of land to foreigners, saying the moratorium urged by a government-appointed committee would have little effect and needed to be backed up by legislation.

PAC president Dr Motsoko Pheko said: "Why do we keep on selling our land to foreigners, when our own redistribution process has yet to be completed?"

He was commenting on the report of a government-appointed committee into foreign ownership of land which, among other things, called for an immediate moratorium on the sale of land to non-South Africans.
Iol.co.za

Spotlight on foreign ownership
News24.com - South Africa
The government will not impose an immediate moratorium on the purchase and sale of land to foreigners, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza said on Friday.

This, after a panel of experts she appointed in 2004 to look into the ownership of South African land by foreigners suggested a moratorium be imposed while she studied its interim report on the phenomenon.

The panel's third report - and the first made public, was released in Pretoria on Friday. "There is a very strong public perception that an unregulated ownership of land, such as housing by foreigners, contributes significantly to the lack of readily available and affordable land for land reform," said the panel's deputy chairperson Joe Matthews.
News24.com

Land moratorium a bad idea - estate agents
Iol.co.za - South Africa
Estate agents have reacted with dismay to reports that a government committee wants the sale of all land to foreigners to be stopped immediately. Such a move would send out a very bad message to potential investors, property experts have warned.

Sapa reported today that a committee investigating land ownership by foreigners had recommended that a moratorium be imposed immediately on the sale of land to foreigners.

The recommendation was made to the Minister of Land and Agricultural Affairs, Thoko Didiza, on Friday. The committee, created by the minister in 2004 to investigate foreign land-ownership, said the moratorium should be an interim measure until legislation was promulgated.
Iol.co.za

Stiff penalty for errant developer
Business Day - South Africa
A landmark decision in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court this week could see developers or architects receiving jail sentences in the future for demolishing protected buildings.

Justus van der Hoven, owner of partially demolished Dudley Court, a heritage building in Parktown North, Johannesburg, became the first person on Tuesday to be given a five-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay a R30,000 fine to the South African Heritage Resources Agency.

Van der Hoven was charged under the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999. The heritage agency's Solayman Ebrahim said offenders usually received R5,000 fines with no suggestion of jail time.
Business Day

190 lawyers practising illegally - law society
The Herald - South Africa
The Cape Law Society has threatened to bring interdicts against 190 lawyers in the Eastern and Western Cape because they are practising illegally without fidelity fund certificates.

Among the firms that have been blacklisted by the society is that of former rugby boss Silas Nkanunu, of Nkanunu & Van Loggerenberg, in Govan Mbeki Avenue, Port Elizabeth.

Between September and October each year, lawyers are required by law to submit their books to independent auditors, who check whether their financial statements and books are in order.

Should there be no irregularity, the auditors hand audited financial reports to these lawyers, who in return send them to the Cape Law Society.
The Herald