Full steam ahead after Amazon office park gets OK

Developers of the R4.6bn Amazon office park in Cape Town can proceed with construction after a full bench of the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday rescinded a previous judgment interdicting the construction.

The court found that those opposed to the River Club development — the Observatory Civic Association (OCA) and Tauriq Jenkins, who represented himself as the high commissioner of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council (GKKITC) — failed to show how the right to heritage could suffer any harm.

In March this year, deputy judge president Patricia Goliath stopped construction, ruling in favour of the GKKITC and the OCA, which did not want concrete on the privately owned land they claimed had intangible or spiritual significance.

Goliath ruled that economic development could not trump the rights of indigenous people.

However, in July, the Supreme Court of Appeal ordered that the developers be given the right to appeal against the ban on construction.

The decision on Tuesday dismissed Goliath’s ruling, allowing the development to go ahead after months of legal wrangling between the groups opposed to the development and those for it, a saga that also sucked in the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape government.

The developer, Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust, hailed the court decision as a win for jobs and heritage, saying it is in the interest of all Capetonians.

The office, public park and affordable housing project on a former golf course has been tied up in litigation for a year, leaving city and provincial authorities concerned that it gave the impression that Cape Town is hostile to development.

The developer argued previously that it stood to lose more than R400m in banking and other penalties if the development — which will create more than 5,000 temporary building jobs — were canned.

Referring to the City of Cape Town, the judgment found the “development addressed some of its core constitutional obligations”, which included proposed low-cost housing, employment opportunities and the creation of transport infrastructure.

The court also found that Jenkins “misrepresented the views of some indigenous leaders without consulting with them” and was “determined to stop the development at all costs”.

“He fabricated a constitution to suit his objective and betrayed the trust others had in him.”