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The small chauffeur company – that is fighting the Hilton Durban’s new Arab sheik owner for kicking it out of the hotel – has vowed to fight on in what is becoming a bruising and protracted battle.
Katerina Papadakis, boss of African Soil Tours and Transfers, was speaking on Friday after a Durban High Court judge adjourned indefinitely its “semi-urgent” application for an interdict.
The small women-led BEE company has, since the middle of last year, been preparing a legal challenge after the Hilton Durban terminated its contract.
The challenge has been delayed for reasons that are in dispute.
The interdict had been sought to stop the hotel from running a chauffeur service of its own pending African Soil’s main challenge.
Papadakis told City Press before proceedings began that bookings for their services had dried up as the hotel had ceased referring guests to them and was instead actively discouraging guests. They were battling to pay their bills.
Judge Zaba Nkosi said he could not find reasons for the matter to be heard on an urgent basis.
However, he referred the matter to a senior judge to see if the interdict and main case could be given preference together on the roll. But the senior judge in charge of the roll could not find space.
The urgency of settling the matter was not lost on Nkosi, who noted that such was the backlog on the court roll that should the matter finally be heard in, perhaps 2020 or 2021, by then all African Soil could expect was a “Pyrrhic victory”.
He was making a classical allusion to a battle in antiquity when Greek forces defeated the Romans, but their losses were as great as the Romans.
Papadakis, however, is a modern Greek-South African and she insisted Friday’s outcome had served to stiffen their resolve. “We see this as a win,” she said.
Papadakis pointed out that the judge had not awarded costs and on Monday this week their attorneys would apply for a fresh interdict against the Hilton Durban.
She said this was possible within two months.
“We are just going to continue … if we have a house with no furniture when we are finished, then that’s what’s going to happen. We are not going to let it go.
“It’s not about us. It will happen again. Someone must stand up. There is a history of them doing this. We don’t believe justice will fail,” Papadakis said after the hearing.
Earlier this month City Press reported how Papadakis detailed in court papers how African Soil had begun its three-year contract with the Hilton Durban in November 2017. She suspected their deal went sour soon after this, when Arab Emirates-based Khalaf Ahmed Khalaf Al Otaiba bought the hotel early last year.
Papadakis, in papers and in an interview last week, told how Al Otaiba in loud, broken English made plain his unhappiness at being fetched from King Shaka Airport by a woman African Soils driver.
Khalaf is a major mover and shaker in the oil-rich Gulf states. His business interests span a host of industries, including hospitality operations in the United Arab Emirates, the UK and in Morocco.
In South Africa, apart from the Hilton Durban, Bin Otaiba Hotels own the posh Hyatt Regency in Rosebank; Park Inn By Radisson Sandton; Radisson Blu Le Vendome in Cape Town; and Port Elizabeth’s King Edward Hotel.
Khalaf is the chairperson of Bin Otaiba Hotels, according to its website.
Papadakis said the Hilton Durban’s new owners had bought their own vehicles and were determined to take over the transfer business.
Six months after they had begun operating, in Aprillast year, the hotel’s general manager Markus Fritz informed African Soil of the decision “to terminate the contract owing to noncompliance with the terms ofthe contract”.
Some of the terms of the contract and changes to it that Fritz drafted are now in dispute.
In his affidavit Fritz insisted that the cancellation had nothing to do with the hotel’s new ownership.
He rejected claims he had been involved in nepotism and that relations between him and Papadakis had grown frosty after African Soil had refused to give his wife, a tour operator, preferential deals.
He said the contract had been lawfully terminated and, even if it was not, the service was not exclusive to African Soil and Hilton Durban was within its rights to give business to third parties.
Earlier last week Papadakis told of the financial strain the business had been under since April.
Should the contract be cancelled, African Soil faced a R5.8 million debt and seven permanent employees would be out of work.
Papadakis’ husband Taki had bonded the family home to pay for their Hilton Durban vehicle fleet and they had been relying on the help of family to pay wages.
They faced ruin if the matter was not settled, she said.
She denied claims that she owned property at Zimbali, the swish estate north of Durban.
“We rented a CBD [central business district] flat for when we were in Durban,” she said.
She also dismissed talk that her husband had inherited R12 million after the death last year of his father.
Khalaf could not be reached at the time of publication.
