There is a law in South Africa called "Die Mandament van Spolie" or otherwise "spoliasie". It is not the same as spoliation in English; spoliation is the spoili

There is a law in South Africa called "Die Mandament van Spolie" or otherwise "spoliasie". It is not the same as spoliation in English; spoliation is the spoiling of evidence. Spoliasie, however, means that you can't take away an existing right, an existing usage by someone, without somehow proving through the process of the law that that person is not entitled to that right. A good example of this is an access gate used by multiple people. If you change the lock or remote, and someone else uses the gate—rightfully or not—then you are at risk of transgressing this feature of the law. Interestingly enough, there has been a case where the gate was electronic and a case where the gate was manual and in the two different cases the judges actually ruled differently in the two cases. One case of changing access credentials without giving access to other users was "spoliasie" and one wasn't—obviously also complicating subsequent interpretation of the law. In fact, since you cannot take the law into your own hands, a thief could theoretically after having stolen your car and if you take back the car somehow, sue you for spoliasie. The key here is that the police is supposed to go and apprehend the suspect and bring back your car. Of course, practically, such a case would never go to court. But before you think the "theory" of this is crazy, consider this: How do you know who has a right to usage of which items and personal properties? In fact, maybe you lent the "thief" your car (and maybe the "thief" is even your friend) and suddenly you decided you didn't like this friend anymore and called the police and told them this person stole your car. Maybe it's a silly example, but the point is that it's tricky to just impede existing usage without proper consideration. The principle is that an existing right should be respected until shown to be an unlawful usage and hence not a valid right. By the way, IANAL.