The developers of a R4.6bn office park to house tech giant Amazon are appealing against an urgent interdict that halted construction on the building site, sending 750 workers home on Friday.
The interdict jeopardises the jobs of more than 4,000 workers involved in the project at various stages.
The Liesbeek Leisure Property Trust (LLPT) say the interdict will dampen development in Cape Town, which sorely needs it in the poor economic environment.
Eight months ago, after a three-year planning process and many consultations with interested parties, construction of the office park started in Observatory, Cape Town.
The project is to turn a private golf course and polluted, canalised rivers into an office park that includes public road upgrades, a bridge and a public park with 6km of cycling trails and river rehabilitation costing R38m.
It also includes plans to create affordable housing in a prime location, while most of Cape Town’s lower-income people live in townships on the city’s fringes.
The development was supported by the City of Cape Town and eight First Nations groups, but was opposed by the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin indigenous council, run by three leaders, and the Observatory Civic Association, led by public health professor Leslie London.
The opposition groups argued that laying concrete and building of tall buildings would permanently damage land of great cultural and spiritual significance to the Khoi and San communities.
Participated extensively
They said they were not properly consulted, and the judge agreed.
But the developers say that Tauriq Jenkins, leader of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin indigenous council, who questioned the consultation process in court, participated extensively in the consultation and did not provide evidence that he was excluded.
Eight First Nations groups supported the development. Some were chosen as suppliers to the project, but their business contracts have since been suspended. More than 500 workers in factories supplying material to the site have also been affected since construction was stopped on Friday.
But deputy judge president Patricia Goliath, who stopped building temporarily, ruled that public and economic benefits were no more important than the right of First Nations people to be heard. She criticised the previous consultation process and asked it to be modified.
“This matter ultimately concerns the rights of indigenous peoples. The development of substantial economic infrastructural and public benefits can never override the fundamental rights of First Nations peoples,” she wrote in her judgment.
Developers and the City of Cape Town argued in court papers that if the construction was delayed Amazon would pull out, leaving behind a disused golf course, a parking lot and storm water drains. Failure to complete the project would mean the developer pays more than R120m in penalties to lenders and Amazon.
The LLPT said they cannot allow a “small group, who have proven time and again that they have zero interest in an outcome that creates social, economic and heritage benefits for the First Nation people and the people of Cape Town, to block this world-class project and have a major dampening effect on future developments in the region”.
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