Respect the Constitution mayor Plato

Dan Plato ignored sound planning principles and expert opinion

CAPE Town's mayor is on a propaganda offensive.

Dan Plato wants to defend his administration's decision to depart from multiple planning and environmental policies to approve the rezoning of land allowing the redevelopment of the River Club in Cape Town.

The development is a massive mixed-use property and will house, among other things, Amazon's new African Headquarters.

In his decision, the mayor has ignored sound planning principles, his own experts' opinion and much evidence.

Now, he seeks to blame opponents of the development for the potential loss of thousands of jobs should the High Court find his decision-making was reviewable.

This is unfortunate but not surprising coming from a politician whose administration has done everything possible to facilitate the private benefits stemming from a planning decision by a public entity.

The mayor's argument is being given extensive coverage, but it is cynically misleading.

First, the number of jobs to be created is not “thousands”. By their own admission, the developers note the number of permanent jobs likely to be created as a result of the development is 631, mostly in cleaning and security.

Approximately 5 240 jobs will be generated over the three years of construction, including jobs of varying duration.

While this is a contribution to the economy, it is a contribution that would be made by any development of this scale.

The problem is that the mayor wants these jobs on a greenfield site of huge heritage significance that the South African Heritage Resources Agency is busy grading as a national Heritage Site while the earthworks are proceeding thanks to the mayor's flawed decision-making.

As the late Vanessa Watson, former head of Urban Planning at the University of Cape Town, indicated in her letter of support to our campaign: “There is no reason why a development of this size, nature and use should not go ahead and create the jobs and rates revenue it claims, but there is no planning reason why it should go ahead on this site. Cape Town has significant quantities of minimally used open land.”

Prof Watson confirmed that there are “no doubt many other sites that would meet the claimed advantages of the development far better and would result in higher levels of spatial transformation and integration”. This is confirmed in our affidavits as part of our high court challenge.

Second, in that regard, the mayor will be well aware that in response to Amazon's call for proposals, there were multiple applications of which, we understand, five sites were initially shortlisted.

Liesbeek Leisure Property Trust (LLPT), the River Club developers, were not on that shortlist. Only in the final shortlist, did LLPT make an appearance.

Presumably this is because it had now secured the necessary approvals from the City and Province to make their bid compliant with Amazon's preference that “it was desirable that any proposed development should not require any planning departures” so that the associated public participation process could be “avoided”.

As our court papers argue, it is a fact that there are several “large and experienced property development companies that have the necessary expertise and capacity to undertake such a project and would welcome the opportunity to do so”.

Moreover, press reports confirm that Amazon is continuing to expand its operations in Cape Town and is planning to hire 3 000 new customer service employees in South Africa, including remote and flexible workfrom-home positions.

Amazon is not leaving Cape Town if the high court rules that the approvals for this particular development were flawed.

Third, the mayor must also be aware that there are a large number of unoccupied or under-occupied office buildings across Cape Town reaching record highs. Office vacancy rates reported in the SA Property Owners Association Q2 report for 2021 have risen sharply across the City, particularly in locations such as Century City and the V&A Waterfront. Given that the commercial property sector is currently experiencing record lows in occupancy, it is illogical to be promoting this development in this highly sensitive site.

The 2021 Rode Report on the “Wilting Office Market” headlines the fact that “Ghost buildings spook office market”.Given information that has come to our attention now about Amazon's specifications, we believe pressure was put on the City to expedite the approvals.

Last, the fact that the mayor is now using his extensive access to public platforms to shift the responsibility for his flawed decision-making on to civic, Khoi and NGO groups opposing the development, by implying our actions will lead to job losses, is shameless.

Exploiting the desperate situation of unemployed persons in South Africa for political or social gain is not unique to the City of Cape Town. We need only look at how quickly the powderkeg of unemployment and poverty was exploited in KZN and Gauteng by the former president's supporters in the recent attempted insurrection, or the ease with which Cape Town's criminal gangs recruit unemployed youth as foot soldiers in their criminal armies to see how people's misfortune can be used cynically by others for ulterior motives.

Moreover, the City is claiming for its legal costs in the coming High Court review of its decisions on the River Club. This is a strategy completely at odds with the principle that constitutional litigation (encompassing the right to administrative justice) against organs of state should not attract adverse costs orders, particularly when state respondents have made common cause with a private developer in the defence of its interests in opposing our interdict.

It is also deeply ironic that the City seems to be concerned about legal fees when it was willing to engage in “fruitless and wasteful expenditure” in fighting with the SA Human Rights Commission in 2020. The SAHRC had produced a scathing report on the City's failure to respect human rights when it relocated homeless persons to a detention site in Strandfontein under the pretext of compliance with Covid-19 lockdown regulations.

The City challenged the report in court, then withdrew its challenge but still tried to recoup fees from the SAHRC, wasting further legal costs in an action that Judge Desai described as underpinned by a “patently unconstitutional endeavour by a municipality” to hinder the SAHRC from effectively discharging its statutory powers to monitor human rights.

Notably, the City also chose to spend residents' rates on employing legal counsel to oppose Heritage Western Cape's effort to grade the River Club as a provincial heritage site over the course of 2018 to 2019.

The alacrity with which the City resorts to spending our rates for legal action, often unfounded, should be considered in light of the report that the City of Cape Town “was red-flagged by Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu for irregular spending to the tune of R65 million” and that “the City procured legal services for several years through a process which had now been found not to be compliant with all the SCM Regulations”.

The mayor has to respect the Constitution which affords everyone the right to administrative justice.

It won't be the first time that the mayor is called upon to take accountability for the City's inappropriate decisions. If the City truly believes that “Integrity, objectivity and public responsibility should never be influenced or undermined by private interests in the course of fulfilling our official City duties”, then the mayor is acting inconsistently with the City's own Ethical Code.

This code seeks to “implement the basic values and principles of public administration as described in Section 195(1) of the Constitution of South Africa” including that “public administration be accountable”.

We are holding the mayor and the MEC for Environmental Planning and Economic Development accountable by taking the decisions on review to the high court, which is the right of all South Africans.