The ministerial inquiry into the eviction of 800 families in Lwandle, Cape Town, handed over its report to Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu in parliament on Wednesday.

The 296-page report was handed over by Advocate Denzil Potgieter, who chaired the inquiry which was established shortly after the evictions in June this year. The Inquiry was the Minister’s response to the mass evictions of the illegal residents on Sanral owned land.The minister said she would spend next week studying and analysing the report. Then the report will be sent to the parliamentary portfolio committee, which will thoroughly examine its recommendations.

Potgieter pointed out that “non-participation from the City of Cape Town” may have hampered the outcome of the report, and emphasised that the minister takes note of this when analysing the report. Potgieter added that both the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Human Settlements Department sent written submissions, although they declined the invite to be part of the public hearings.

“The time period we had to deal with this was not enough to investigate every detail, therefore a forensic research of some nature would be necessary,” he added.

Minister Lindiwe Sisulu explained her disappointment at the manner in which the people of Lwandle were evicted. “That act of evicting people on a cold winter day was so inhumane, and such things should never happen again,” she said.

 As South Africa has seen many evictions, the minister said they would use the inquiry results to deal with future evictions.

 What also came up yesterday was that the costs of the operations of the inquiry were R4 million.

Twitter: @GililiChris