Residents see red over Guptaplex
A gargantuan house adjoining the family compound is attracting ire from neighbours, who want it demolished
On first approach, the house looks like a small and particularly ugly hotel. This is deceiving. It is, in fact, a physical parable about the allegations of state capture levelled against the Gupta family. And on Wednesday it provided a glimpse into the future of an inquiry into those allegations, if any such ever takes place.
The Gupta family has been following the letter of the law all along, their lawyer Patrick Mundell told a tribunal of the Johannesburg city council on Wednesday.
“There is no intention of anyone to break the law or thumb their nose or to challenge the authority of the council,” said Mundell. It’s just that the family is rich, “mega rich”, and that comes with peculiarities that include throwing big parties. The application of large amounts of money in ways they’re not used to can make other people confused and angry, Mundell explained, and that leads to all sorts of allegations.
“They are trying hard to find fault,” said Mundell of those doing the alleging.
On the contrary, the Gupta family has done plenty that is illegal, countered irate neighbour Martin Lewison, and has got away with it thanks to the failure of the authorities to act.
And now they’re trying to pull a fast one through misrepresentation, added town planner Craig Pretorius, on behalf of the residents’ association of the Saxonwold suburb.
The solution Pretorius suggested is as close as a building can come to being kicked out of the country, as the Economic Freedom Fighters has suggested must be done to the Gupta family.
“It should be demolished and built correctly,” the town planner said.
In between those two mortally opposed sides sits a municipal planning tribunal, a quasi-judicial structure that must make a decision knowing that, regardless of how it finds, one party or the other will turn to a higher authority and the fight will continue.
“It will be interesting to see what the courts make of this,” muttered neighbour Lewison, as he stomped into a lift after Wednesday’s hearing.
Lewison has lived in Saxonwold for going on two decades, and he is angry. In 2009 the Gupta family started to build a house on a stand next to his family home, which now adjoins “Sahara Estate”, the sprawling family compound.
By the time the new house was complete it had a floor space of well over 2 000m2 — just how big it is forms part of a dispute — and is recognisable from space.
On satellite photos the chessboard on the roof, formed by large blackand-white tiles, makes it easily distinguishable from its neighbours with their uniform red tile or slate roofs.
The three-storey Gupta house looms over the modest Lewison home in such a fashion that nobody wants to live there.
“The i mpact on our lifestyle and general comfort has been so huge that we have tried to sell our home. But potential purchasers say that they are put off by the unsightly structure imposing on our property,” Lewison told the tribunal. “It is not for us to dictate to wealthy people what size house they build. It is not for us to dictate to wealthy people whether they should have a cinema.”
But building a house 10 times the size of a middle-class dwelling, with a dozen bedrooms, three kitchens, three bars and, yes, a cinema, gives rise to suspicions, said residents’ association representative Pretorius.
“I don’t believe this house was designed for a single family or used for a single family,” he told the tribunal, in a close replay of the kind of incredulity that so many explanations by the Gupta family attracts.
“The home was never intended or used by the owner for normal residential purposes … It is used for guest and entertainment purposes for the house next door.”
Building that play space for the Guptas, and what their team says are their many guests, came at a price, Pretorius insisted.“The reality is that the adjoining owners have lost land value. That building was constructed, I can even say, selfishly.”
The tribunal is expected to communicate its decision on the application during August.