Malema, Mashba, Joburg municipality

Man can’t afford timeshare levies, leaves it to Julius Malema in his will

A story about JuJu that you never saw coming?

Malema, Mashba, Joburg municipality

You have some nice two-week timeshare to the Bela-Bela nature reserve in Durban. The problem starts when the levies become a financial burden AND you can’t get rid of it. So, what do you do? The obvious thing of course, you leave it to Julius Malema in your will!

“I can’t get rid of this timeshare and I can’t afford the levies any more, so I’ve left it to Julius Malema in my will.” – Eben Combrinck

TimesLIVE reports that Combrinck told the National Consumer Commission’s public inquiry in Durban that his timeshare is simply too financially burdening. Diane Terblanche, panel chairman, recounts tells a similar story of not wanting to pass on the financial burden to their kids.

“A woman, a Ms Lategang, told us at the Cape Town hearings that she’d bequeathed her points to a member of the company which had sold them to her – she was adamant her children were not going to inherit the burden.”

The panel has been travelling the country in order to push for a creation of a single piece of legislation to regulate the industry.

Combrink (now in his 70’s) and others have explained how changed financial circumstances have lead them to attempt to unsuccessfully sell their timeshare.

“I had great benefit from my two-week timeshare for many years, but when I could no longer afford it because of my wife’s medical costs, the company was very unsympathetic,” Combrinck said.

Combrink said he stopped paying after the annual levies climbed to R10 000 in total for his two weeks. He says he now gets “all kinds of threats from debt collectors”.

These threats come despite a 2014SA Revenue Service directive stating that levies can not be charged to people who do not have a title deed and do not own a property.

“We need a legal way to get out of these contracts,” Combrinck said. “We shouldn’t be locked in forever.”

Is there legal grey area here, or are the companies just not listening?