A businessman has won his long battle to prove that his father was dispossessed of prime land on which Durbans showpiece Pavilion shopping centre was built.

But it is not the multimillion-rand shopping centre site in Westville or financial compensation that Lionel Pillay is after.

Instead, he is asking for a small piece of land adjacent to the mall that he wants to secure for a development of his own.

Pillay lodged a restitution claim with the Land Claims Commission in 1995, saying his father, Gungaloo, was forced to sell his eight-acre dairy farm 46 years ago before the Group Areas Act was enforced.

Pillays parents were among 40 000 Indians and Africans who lived in Cato Manor and Westville before they were forcibly removed when the two suburbs were declared areas reserved for whites.

Pillay took his argument to the Land Claims Court after his claim had been rejected by the commission.

Represented by advocate Kessie Naidu and attorney Vassist Sewpaul, he claimed that his father had been forced to give up his land because he had anticipated the impending removal of Indians and Africans from Cato Manor and Westville.

"First his cattle and equipment were disposed of. With the odds weighed against him, he sold his eight acres of land, on which the Pavilion now stands, for a paltry 1 000 (which was about R2 000 then) to a white businessman.

For many years up to his death in 1973, my father grieved for his lost land, he said.

But the commission and the Department of Land Affairs contended that the fear of expropriation was not the only probable reason that Pillay (Gungaloo) sold the property. It was possibly the prevalence of crime and squalor in the area.

Judge Justice Moloto was not convinced by the commissions argument and said: I am satisfied that he sold the property as a result of the racially discriminatory laws.

Moloto found that the sale of Pillays land had amounted to a dispossession and ordered both the commission and department to pay the costs of the suit.

For Pillay, the victory is hollow.

I feel numb. Im just glad that I proved my father had been dispossessed, he said.

He is now bidding for a piece of real estate near the Pavilion.

Zwelihle Memela, a spokesman for the commission, said: There are many cases where it is not possible to restore to people their original land because of big developments.

I am aware that the Pavilion has been built on what used to be Pillays fathers land. It is, of course, impractical to restore this land to him.

Sunday Times