Snippet 01-2025

Property Trends: Regular readers of property news will recall that especially (the average) South African residential property prices are in decline, when compared to our inflation rate. South Africans are not alone in this position, as may be seen from the following...

The coronavirus: a force majeure?

A farmer contracts to supply logs to a purchaser after having made the necessary arrangements to automate his tree harvesting activities: he orders the machines. Owing to the closure of borders and factories, following on the corona virus pandemic, these are not...

Unregistered Servitudes

You and your neighbour, an old friend, have a decades-old handshake understanding that you and your employees may take a shortcut through his adjoining farm, over an existing road, for you and them to get to another part of your farm. Is this agreement valid and, if...

Timber Farming and the National Water Act

– Dr John Scotcher   Prior to 1972, the establishment of large-scale state-sponsored and private afforestation was promoted to supply the increasing demand for mining and structural timber. There were no laws before 1972 that limited the expansion of plantation...

Conveyancing Fraud 2018 – 01

This week past I came across an Assistant Registrar of Deeds poring over a case in which the presiding judge had a really unpleasant things to say about the Johannesburg Registrar of Deeds. This case, I believe, will lead to changes that will be made in our deeds...

Proxi Smart 2018 – 01

Often, usually specialist, work is legally reserved to a profession or specially qualified group of persons – in order to protect the public. When it comes to conveyancing, a specialist field within a professional grouping, the factors at work are primarily that a...