Ma-Afrika Hotels heads to ConCourt to appeal eviction

Private hotel group Ma-Afrika Hotels has launched an application for leave to appeal an eviction order – brought by its landlord Venezia Trust – to the Constitutional Court, citing the Covid-19 pandemic and related government-imposed lockdown restrictions as reasons why the group failed to pay its rent.

The hotel group which owns a mix of five-star and three-star hotels and accommodations establishments in the Western Cape – including Coopmanhuis Boutique Hotel and Spa, The Stellenbosch Hotel and the Rivierbos Guest House – has argued that considering the events of the last two years, the eviction is against public policy and is unconstitutional.

This latest development follows the group’s business interruption insurance court battle with short-term insurance giant Santam last year – a battle that it eventually won.

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“Ma-Afrika contends that a grand-scale disaster in the form of a pandemic was not in the contemplation of the parties when the lease agreement was signed, and that the enforcement of the lease, and the eviction notice, were against public policy and unconstitutional,” the group said in a statement on Monday.

According to the group, its landlord Venezia Trust took it to court in February 2021 to seek an eviction order against it after the group failed to pay rent for one of its properties during the pandemic.

The two parties are bound by a ten-year lease agreement which commenced in April 2019. Ma-Afrika Hotels was only able to comply with the agreement up until March 2020, the month when the first hard lockdown was implemented by government.

The eviction order against the hotel group will be suspended pending the outcome of the Constitutional Court proceedings.

Novel legal question

The group says its decision to take the matter to the highest court in the country is also motivated by a need to set new legal precedent that speaks to the plight of the country’s tourism sector, which was dealt several crippling Covid-19-related blows over the last two years.

“Ma-Afrika is placing a novel legal question before the Constitutional Court, which is to allow a tenant, in the interests of justice, to raise partial remission of rent as a defence at the time when a landlord seeks to evict a tenant for non-payment of full rent. Common law currently does not allow this defence,” the group said.

Taking the appeal to the Constitutional Court it added is further motivated by the group’s efforts to avoid job losses in an industry that altogether employs about 1.5 million people and contributes 8.6% to the country’s economy.

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