I went through something Jerry Maguire referred to as a pride-swallowing siege, over the course of the past few months. When I moved to Johannesburg 23 months ago, I started renting a loft apartment in the upmarket suburb of Houghton (well, neighboring Houghton, in Orchards). To give you can idea of the level of posh, I was living literally 2-3km from Nelson Mandela's mansion. What happened to me though, beggars belief.
I suppose it started off not happening to me, but to my slumlady (as opposed to slumlord). Due to the worsening economic climate she tried to put her house on the market, failed, raised my rent and then a confluence of events, mostly bad, including a burglary conspired to...well...force her to move out of her own lush lodgings and hire them out. So guess what she did? She started moving into my space. I know what you're thinking. Since she was the owner it was her space after all? Maybe, but then what was I paying for? The priveledge to provide charity to a sqautter? She occupied a sauna space immediately below the loft (placing a board over the saunca and then sleeping on that), and used the garage area I was using as her kitchen and the swimming pool area (er...my area) as her washing up space and lounge. Naturally we were living in closer and closer proximity - a recipe for conflict.
I was preoccupied initially with work and what not, and although we had our occasional run-ins I suppose I hoped/imagined that she was going to find some other place. Because who could live like she was for an extended period? Cooking in one garage, microwaving in another, sneaking into and out of places. Surely she'd tire of this sort of lifestyle, especially given the one she'd been used to...
Noooooooo.
Things got worse and worse. She started coming into my apartment while I was at work and using my refrigerator to store her milk, my kettle to cook tea. Someone said they saw her and her son walking through my place and her getting onto my bed and climbing through one of the windows.
But everything came to a head when my girlfriend moved in with me. The old lady went nuts. She knew her game was up you see. She could no longer have the run of my portion of the proiperty while I was work as she had been doing because my girlfriend would be there. And since I wanted a decent space for us to share, and privacy, I needed the old lady - if was going to persist in squatting - to do so as unobtrusively as possible, and also to startclearing up the growing garbage dump that was once a fairly pleasant swimming pool area.
Of course she was having none of this, and if anything it was me that had to crawl into a corner. Her final response to my letters informing her to quit using the garage as a kitchen was to serve me with an eviction notice. In the middle of the month. She later accused me of damaging her refrigerator, she called the police and the next day I was sitting in a jail cell with a suspected murderer and an alleged car thief.
You can imagine my frustration. And of course, who is anyone going to believe? The poor old lady, or the young man 'with an attitude'? So I began to catalogue the sequence of events, photographing the deteriorating conditions, photographing the swimming-pool-as-laundry area and also asking for legal advice - guess where? On Facebook. I also made YOUTUBE videos and a few friends and people I've never met (not hundreds, a handful) commiserated. There support meant a lot. I showed YOUTUBE videos to the neighboring tenants, and they proved instrumental in providing me with letters which backed me up in my case. And out of Facebook, a lawyer emerged and began to give me advice. This led to me signing a contract with him.
I have since moved out, and of course no deposit was refunded. I am now sueing her with the aid of Facebook-sourced-legal-councel for the rental and the loss of the enjoyment of the space I rented.
But it was really thanks to the lawyer and a few facebook friends that when I went to court after my brief prison term (just an hour in the slammer) I went with a clear idea of what to do. The case was thrown out,and now it is our turn to prosecute for satisfaction of the malicious claims made and other losses.
The support on Facebook made a difference at a time that sometimes felt quite lonely. When you've been in jail co-workers and even friends tends to think you must have done something to deserve it. But in Social Media world, there are always people out there with time and energy to listen or commiserate. Some are whackjobs, someare fruitcakes, but others are genuinely nice people. Recently I met one of these people. My girlfriend and I went with him - a Facebook guy we'd never met other than through this drama - and watched Terminator Salvation together. Then we went for a meal. And we've been hanging out since. He's involved in IT, and quite an interesting character.
I called the series Slum Wars and you can view some of the video footage here. The saga continues but a happy-ish ending is on the cards. The case will go to trial in 6 months. I'll let you know what happens, and by then I may be able to reveal the identity of the person at the root of this nightmare. Now I need social media to clarify if - after a public trial - the details of the case, once concluded, are in the public domain...
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