No to racecourse development

MANY Capetonians are now aware that permission has been given by the city council to develop Kenilworth Racecourse to include a hotel, houses, a restaurant, bigger quarantine areas for the horses and more.

This is problematic in many aspects and the following are just three in a long list of issues that will negatively impact the plants and animals which call the area home:

No environmental impact assessment has been carried out which, under the law, is illegal.

Lack of public awareness on the issue; only two small adverts were placed in newspapers, which ensured that the minimum number of people would see them and thus follow due process against this development if they opposed it.

Failure to comply with development approval conditions of 1999; the area proposed for development forms part of the City of Cape Town's Biodiversity Network, which severely undermines the integrity of this network, as no specialist studies have been undertaken.

Of particular distress to myself is the potential local extinction of the critically endangered micro-frog and Cape platanna. As a volunteer for the past eight years for the endangered Western leopard toad, I have come to admire and respect amphibians more than ever. Seeing a platanna literally doing the breaststroke in a huge pothole filled with water one rainy evening three years ago near Rondevlei made my week.

I wonder if nepotism is at play here yet again. Does someone run in the “high-up” circles of the council and thus get preferential treatment to push developments like this through without following the proper channels and due process?

The South African motto on our beautiful coat of arms should be changed from “!ke e: /xarra //ke” to “In this country, it's not what you know, it's who you know”.

I condemn this proposed development and object to it in the strongest possible terms. For further information issued officially by various interest groups on this matter, please e-mail me at ellen76seven@gmail.com. Ellen Fedele Plumstead