Contentious vendor sets sights on
Not taking no for an answer from the ethekwini municipality, a local businessman has approached provincial
Aconsortium of local entrepreneurs in Durban is pressing three levels of government to sanction the development of more than 200 luxury homes and apartments in the middle of the city’s Virginia Bush Nature Reserve.
The plan to build elite homes and three five-storey-high tower blocks inside a gated private estate is being driven by ZC “Zah” Dlamini, a Durban businessman, partner in an undertaker’s firm and the Kwazulu-natal provincial chair of the Black First Land First (BLF) political group, which recently allied itself with Jacob Zuma’s breakaway umkhonto Wesizwe party.
Dlamini, with 15 or so unnamed partners, is promoting the plan as a “low-impact, eco-conscious” residential development that would impact only “about 10%” of the reserve. However, a brochure leaked on social media by local activist Pete Graham tells a very different story.
This document lays out plans to cram 100 “luxury houses” and a further 130 townhouses into a 38ha section of the proclaimed nature reserve in Durban North, along with a clubhouse, restaurant, swimming pool, sports field, tennis courts, putting green, gym and other facilities – with residual space for a “wildlife sanctuary” with small antelope species, birds and fish.
But ethekwini council officials, who have rejected Dlamini’s application, note that the Virginia forest and nature reserve is an integral part of the city’s open-space network and suggest that the housing plan could destroy or degrade up to 70% of the reserve’s protected natural habitat.
Dlamini, a senior partner of the Durban-based Ikhaya Funeral Home business, does not appear to have any prior experience in property development, but is hoping to sell
What species are protected? The municipality has failed to say. Is it a tree, or a cat, or a mouse? That land is zoned as open space. Why must areas be vacant while we are packed
in our locations?
“executive houses” in the proposed Northwoods estate for up to R8-million each.
He appears to view the nature reserve as “vacant land” ripe for private development. But the plan, germinating behind the scenes since 2019, has now prompted opposition from numerous residents and raised concern about political pressure that could jeopardise the future of other urban nature reserves in Durban and elsewhere.
The concern is that Dlamini and his partners are intent on “leapfrogging” city planners’ standard development approval process by putting pressure on more senior local, provincial or national government officials to back the project on the basis that it would create jobs, spur economic development and swell municipal rates coffers.
Although ethekwini’s real estate department and other branches rejected the plan in writing in March 2023, Daily Maverick has confirmed that there have been further engagements between Dlamini and ethekwini officials as recently as last month – apparently after interventions by the provincial and national government.
Last year, Dlamini wrote to Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) Minister Barbara Creecy to voice his “frustration” about the rejection of his application. Creecy wrote back to him in August, indicating that developments inside a nature reserve “are not necessarily prohibited”, but had to be undertaken with the necessary approvals and in compliance with legal requirements.
In response to our queries, Creecy’s office said that, because the declaration of protected areas is a concurrent function of provincial and municipal government, Dlamini was advised to approach the relevant authorities, “specifically the Kwazulu-natal MEC as well as the ethekwini municipality on the matter, as the DFFE has no direct jurisdiction on property development matters”.
Dlamini claims to have received support for his plans from Siboniso Duma, the KwaZulu-natal MEC for economic development,