The Malete Land Board has been struck out of the legal land tussle between government and Balete tribe due to non-compliance with the rules of court.

The Land Board, which has been teaming up with government in trying to cancel a title deed of a farm belonging to Balete tribe known as Farm Forest Hill K-90, had last week stood before the court seeking to be granted a chance to file their own appeal out of time after blaming its attorney for non-compliance.

It had on December 11, 2017, brought an application before the High Court seeking an order directing the Registrar of Deeds to cancel a Deed of Transfer which had been passed in favour of Balete in respect of the farm until they lost the case in 2020.

Now the Land Board will not be part of the applicants in the appeal scheduled for January 2023 which was filed by the government represented by the Attorney General (AG) at the Court of Appeal (CoA).

On Friday, the bench of Chief Justice Terence Rannowane, CoA Judge President Tebogo Tau and justices Isaac Lesetedi, Singh

Walia, and Mercy Garekwe ruled that the condonation application filed by the Land Board to appeal out of time be thrown out. Justice Tau, when reading the ruling, explained that the explanation by the Land Board that its attorney was negligent in failing to deliver the notice and grounds of appeal could not account for exceptional circumstances.

“I must find, therefore, that the Land Board has fallen far short of advancing even a reasonable explanation for the delay in moving this application. Having failed to meet the first requirement of court rules there would be no need to determine the next requirement relating to very strong prospects of success.

The application, therefore, is dismissed,” she said. She pointed out that it has been held in several cases that the negligence or ineptitude of an attorney could not amount to exceptional circumstances of non-compliance with court rules. Meanwhile, the tribe led by Kgosi Mosadi Seboko also suffered the same fate when their condonation applications to file a notice of appeal and cross-appeal out of time were struck out for non-compliance with court rules. “As I indicated earlier when dealing with the application by the Land Board, the reliefs sought by the tribe would suffer the same fate as the appeal by the Land Board. The notices, that is the notice to oppose and cross-appeal, were served on the Court of Appeal but not filed with the High Court as is prescribed by the rules of this court,” she noted. The Judge President explained that the applications were not properly before court and the question for condonation of any failure to comply with any rule of procedure could not arise as there was nothing to condone.

She said the application for condonation of the two notices is, therefore, a nullity and stands to be struck out.

The dismissal of the applications means that the tribe will not have a chance to argue its case fully in terms of filing its opposition papers to the AG’s appeal but was only given a chance to submit oral arguments and they won’t be able to argue its cross-appeal. “The tribe is granted permission to present oral arguments in opposition to the appeal during the hearing,” she said. The tribe also had to approach the court after failing to comply with court rules.

The tribe is granted permission to present oral arguments in

opposition to the appeal during the

hearing