Maun Customary Court has ordered former North West District Council Chairperson, Duncan Enga, to transfer part of his late father’s residential land to their next door neighbour, Kurl Albert Schulte To Brinke.
A former school teacher at Maun Secondary School, Brinke had taken Enga to court demanding the land which he claimed he had bought from Enga’s father, G.P.S Kgathi, in the mid 90s, but never got to transfer it into his name as the old man died in 2017 before he could process the transfer.
While Enga and his siblings maintained that his father told them not to make the transfer as Brinke never completed the payment, Brinke argued that he completed his end of the deal, which included building a two-room house, and fencing the said yard.
Tasked with solving a 29-year-old land dispute, Kgosi Bringle Dithapo, on Wednesday last week, concluded that evidence brought forward by Brinke was sufficient for him to rightfully claim the land and therefore awarded it to him.
The disputed land is located at Flowertown ward in Maun, on the bank of Thamalakane River. According to Brinke, who has a residential plot next to Kgathi’s, his mother-in-law approached him sometime in 1994 and requested him to help Kgathi, who then had that bigger plot but with no means to develop it.
“We agreed that he will divide part of the land on condition that I help develop his house,” Brinke had explained in court.
He contended that he then built a house for Kgathi, a pit latrine, and fenced the yard.
On a visit to the site, Brinke claimed that the reason their two rooms (his and Kgathi’s,) together with the two toilets, initially looked identical, was because he paid one builder for the job.
On the other side, Enga contended that Brinke did not build the house and that it was actually him and his sister who helped their father complete the house.
Then, he said, he was just a young man having returned from Tirelo Sechaba.
In the end, the court ruled in Brinke’s favour but Enga made it clear that he intended to appeal the customary court judgment.