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Land and land rights remain a contested issue in South Africa. Grobler v Phillips centered on the eviction of an 86-year-old woman, Mrs Phillips, and her disabled son from property she had lived on since she was 11 years old. After a fourteen-year court battle the Constitutional Court granted an eviction order against Mrs Phillips. This case note consists of a discussion of the judgments of the Magistrate's Court, High Court, Supreme Court of Appeal and Constitutional Court. It is found that the Constitutional Court erred in its decision as it applied a formalistic approach, disregarded the narrative of the occupier and did not sufficiently challenge the current neo-liberal regime in which property rights operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the dominant approaches to statutory interpretation through a historical lens. It argues that for most of South Africa's history the methods of interpretation were twisted in order to give effect to the intentions of the legislature. This approach to interpretation has now been discarded into the waste bin of history, and intentionalism has been replaced with contextualism. Or so we are told. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Natal Joint Municipal Pension Fund v Endumeni Municipality 2012 4 SA 593 (SCA) has been hailed as the new, settled approach to interpretation, with the Constitutional Court endorsing Endumeni on numerous occasions. But it appears from both the judgments of the Constitutional Court and those of other Courts that intentionalism is not yet dead. This paper argues that the reason for this is because Endumeni has not provided clarity to the process of interpretation that it proclaims to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]