Cheryl Reddy v Directors of Manyaleti Estate Homeowners Association

The applicant, Cheryl Reddy, is the registered owner of Unit 17 in Manyaleti Estate, a homeowners association community scheme. She alleged that on 7 April 2023 guests attending a party at Unit 33 parked unlawfully within the estate and, when instructed to move their vehicles, one of them struck her stationary car. She reported the incident to the police and to estate security and requested access to the estate’s surveillance footage in order to identify the responsible party. On 14 April 2023 she received only limited footage from approximately 17h00 onward. She requested footage for the whole day, but the association stated that its DVR system had limited storage capacity and automatically overwrote older footage. The applicant believed she was being victimised because the owner of Unit 33 was one of the directors of the homeowners association. She sought an apology, an order compelling due diligence in investigating the matter, access to the camera footage, and damages if the relief was not granted.

• Whether the relief sought by the applicant, namely an apology and an order directing due diligence in the investigation, fell within the adjudicator’s powers under section 39 of the Community Schemes Ombud Service Act 9 of 2011.
• Whether the applicant had been wrongfully denied access to information or documents under section 39(7)(a) of the CSOS Act in relation to the requested CCTV footage.
• Whether a CSOS adjudicator has jurisdiction to award damages or entertain what is effectively a delictual claim arising from vehicle damage.
• Whether an adjudicator may order production of records or footage that no longer exist because they have been overwritten by the scheme’s recording system.

The application was dismissed. The adjudicator ordered that the relief sought by the applicant in terms of section 39(7) be dismissed, found that the relief sought against the respondent was misconceived and dismissed it in terms of section 53(1)(a) of the CSOS Act, and made no order as to costs.

A CSOS adjudicator may grant only relief expressly authorised by section 39 of the CSOS Act; requests for apologies, directions to conduct investigations, and damages fall outside that statutory competence. Although a scheme member may in principle seek access to association records, an order under section 39(7)(a) cannot be made where the evidence shows that the requested footage or documents no longer exist and the applicant has not proved a wrongful denial of access.

The adjudicator observed, with reference to section 26 of the Companies Act, that members of a homeowners association company are in principle entitled to access certain company records, and also noted that the scheme’s rules did not provide a process for members to access association records. These comments were ancillary because the application failed primarily on the basis that the requested full-day footage no longer existed and much of the relief sought was beyond CSOS’s statutory powers.

The decision underscores that CSOS adjudicators have limited statutory powers and cannot grant relief outside the categories expressly contemplated in section 39 of the CSOS Act. It also confirms that CSOS is not the forum for delictual damages claims and that access-to-information relief cannot compel production of records that no longer exist. The matter is significant as a practical illustration of the jurisdictional limits of the CSOS dispute-resolution framework in community scheme disputes.