On Monday 26th October, the Observatory Civic Association and many other objectors will submit appeals to the City over its rezoning decision to permit the construction of a mini-Century City on the River Club grounds owned the Liesbeek Leisure Property Trust (LLPT), a decision made by a special Municipal Planning Tribunal hastily convened on 18th September, two-and-a-half years after the developers first submitted their application.
One of the key elements to the development proposal is that LLPT will infill the existing course of the Liesbeek River adjacent to the River Club and transform an existing artificial canal into a pretend-Liesbeek River, nicely landscaped and lined for joggers, walkers and, presumably, any Khoi ceremonies that can be conducted on an artificial river course. This is a peculiar logic, since the LLPT’s own Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) stated that “… the one heritage feature of high significance that has been identified is the Liesbeek River corridor itself and the confluence which is … a powerful historic symbol that refers to the early landscape of pre-colonial transhumance use, colonial settlement and agriculture and contestation.”
However, while the HIA pretends to take heritage seriously, the giveaway is how the Liesbeek River is really viewed by the developers – as a dispensible element which can be turned into a swale so that the massive development can go ahead. In the words of Japie Hugo, one of LLPT’s planners, the portion of the Liesbeek that runs alongside to the River Club is nothing more than a “neglected stormwater gutter”. In this he is echoing the sentiments of Jody Aufrichtig when he stated that “the River Club site is in fact … degraded, with some parts being used as a rubbish dump - hardly a ‘precious part of our city’ as disingenuously claimed by the OCA.”
In this, both Jody Aufrichtig and Japie Hugo are completely wrong. The River is not a dump, and it is not a gutter. It may be neglected, but that is as a result of the failure of the City to maintain the connection linking the two parts of the River.
It is instructive to understand how this situation arose. In 1952, at the point at which Nationalist Party rule was entrenching apartheid across South Africa, the City planners redirected the flow of Liesbeek River at the point it crossed Observatory Road by constructing an artificial canal to link the Liesbeek to the Black River, in a more direct line located between the River Club and the SAAO. The bulk of the river flow was thus diverted. In doing this, there was no consultation with any indigenous groups – which was not surprising under an apartheid administration.
However, the connection between the original course of the river was meant to be maintained, which it wasn’t. In fact, the reason why the Liesbeek’s original river course “offers relatively poor habitat support” is because it is “not being managed effectively and is not being replenished by freshwater from the Liesbeek.” The image above shows how the intended connection between the river south and north of Observatory Rd indicated by the face brick construction to the left of the river is choked by alien plant growth in the river that is not cleared, nor are the pipes regularly cleared of debri and garbage. As a result, the neglected connection, which remains blocked, disarticulates the river. But instead of fixing the problem, which is the City’s responsibility, the connection has been allowed to become and remain blocked, allowing the developer to attribute uselessness to the portion of the Liesbeek distal to the blockage alongside the River Club and conveniently motivate for its infill.
It’s a similar to the argument used by the developers to justify destroying the Open Space of the River Club property by claiming that because it is already a highly disturbed site, there is no problem is destroying the open space, carting in 100s of 1000s of cubic metres of infill and building 45m high behemoths. But this is a false argument. As Heritage Western Cape (HWC) noted, “the fact that the site has been considerably disturbed in the later half of the 20th Century does not in any way take away the meaning of the site as a historical frontier … or its significance to the region.” HWC go on to note that the claim by the HIA that the fact that “the sense of place has already been transformed iteratively over the past 80 years, does not make it acceptable to destroy what remains.”
Given that it is the City that is responsible for the neglect of the part of the Liesbeek slated for infill, the MPT decision is all the more cynical.
Even the LLPT’s own ‘heritage consultant’ produced a report which recognised the critical importance of the River in its original context. The report quotes a Khoi informant as follows: “The Khoi and the San have the most exquisite symbiotic relationship with the soil, with the river, with the stars, with [Kaggen], who’s the mantis. And, when you look at the Liesbeeck River, the flow of that river and the land next to it … when I talk about a symbiotic relationship, I’m saying that the river is flowing within; it’s embodied within the consciousness of the Khoi, and so is the land. … By dislocating the Khoi permanently from the land and from its proximity to the river, you’re completely … ripping the soul out of them. It was physical, visceral dislocation, because of the understanding, the integral understanding of connectivity.”
Forgive me, but I couldn’t hear any argument in there that says it is culturally sensitive to infill the river that has such meaning to the Khoi and then to create an artificial river on the opposite side of the property to which you can then attach meaning.
Moreover, the City’s Environmental Management Department commented on the rezoning application on 23rd January 2020 as follows: “Infilling of the old Liesbeek River channel and remodelling of this channel into a vegetated stormwater swale will also impact negatively on the high level of significance of the cultural landscape … of which the pre-1952 river course is an integral part...”
In fact, rather than infilling it, you could retain the original river, as recommended by a Delft University study, re-establish it as a liveable urban wetland, that is both meaningful for First Nation identity and cosmology, as well as impacting positively on the environment, through flood attenuation, storm water mitigation, water quality amelioration and providing habitat for endangered floral and faunal species in an increasingly urbanised environment.
However, that sort of thinking seems far removed from our planners and developers’ thinking who are obsessed with the supposed economic benefits. Well, to whom are these economic benefits likely to accrue? A prescient comment by another developer in Observatory in the Tatler on 5th March 2013 responding to community concerns about the impact of an inappropriate large apartment development elsewhere in Observatory perhaps sums up the approach to development sought by developers – “developers have done their utmost to accommodate the residents’ and OCA’s original desires but economics must prevail. In the end, Observatory is not an old age home and is subject ot the same changes that the rest of Cape Town is.” It’s clear this is about money and profits ahead of anything else. Forget heritage, forget the environment, economics are what counts.
What is also interesting about Japie Hugo’s comments is that he told the MPT that there was no reason to re-advertise the development, despite the fact that the application was submitted 2 and a half years ago (on his own admission) and despite the fact that objectors had not seen or been able to comment on 9 documents introduced into the process after October 2018 (which was the only opportunity for IAPs to comment). The Municipal Planning Bylaw in Section 94 indicates the City is permitted to require that a development is re-advertised if more than two years have elapsed since submission and “if new information comes to its attention which is material to the consideration of the application and which adversely affects any person.” Both conditions were met in this case, but the City planners chose not to re-advertise.
In fact, Japie Hugo referred to “a Standard Operating Procedure that the City applies in cases like this and that has been applied in this case.” He then went on to state definitively that “It was not necessary to re-advertise the application.” Yet the Case Officer, when we asked her about this SOP, feigned vagueness (as in “I do recall reference to Section 94 of the MPBL. I have copied Mr September in on this email, I’m not sure if he is able to recall the comment you refer to.”).
There is a City LUMS Notification policy but it says nothing about when to require re-advertising. So, how is it that the LLPT’s planner can confidently state in the Tribunal something about a procedure that the Case Officer professes to know nothing about? However, it all becomes clear when what was not said in the MPT is named - that Japie Hugo served as a Senior Planner for the City, in fact as Director of Planning and Environment for a decade and in another senior planning position for a further 5 years. So, his knowledge of the inside workings of the City and his personal connections to many of the planners currently with the City and responsible for making planning decisions and bringing cases to the MPT, is likely to work to his clients’ advantage.
Indeed, of the MPT panel members who approved the River Club rezoning, two are serving as City planners, and Japie Hugo’s potential influence with them, whilst unknown to outsiders, cannot be ignored. The composition of the Panel has long reflected a relationship perceived as collusive between private sector planners and city planners whose orientation is to default to place economic development ahead of all other considerations as raised by Civics in the Atlantic Seaboard and BoKaap. Hugo’s approach to development whilst Director of Planning and the Environment was to view the City as "the place for blue-chip investment in all property sectors" and to "reward long-term property investors for sinking their capital into the City.”
In fact, the LLPT’s chief planner in the application, Geoff Underwood, is normally a member of the same MPT panel that approved the rezoning. While he recused himself from this particular panel, as is required by law, it is unlikely that his position on the panel and the relationships established over a long period of operation of the panel, did not play any role in influencing the thinking of members of the Panel who made the decision.
Japie Hugo attempted to deflect the criticism of the development by arguing that “it’s not unusual that if the merits of technical reports and assessment of officials cannot be refuted on its merits, that the author’s credibility gets attacked.” This is a puzzling statement for two reasons. Firstly, that is exactly what Rudewaan Arendse, the LLPT’s heritage consultant did at the MPT. He launched into a tirade about Conflict of Interest amongst the objectors based on the flimsiest of pretext without understanding what Conflict of Interest is nor acknowledging his own Conflict of Interest.
Secondly, up to now, we hadn’t criticised the credibility of the River Club’s planners nor was that view articulated at the MPT. All our arguments were focused on evidence that contradicted the rezoning. However, since Hugo has now opened up this can of worms, let’s ask the City what kind of planning system allows a public official, responsible for making decisions that should benefit all of Cape Town’s residents, rich and poor, of diverse backgrounds and interests, to switch sides so effortlessly to assist a mega-project set to make billions of Rands of profit, and to put his knowledge and expertise at the service of a developer? This revolving door is not good for democracy nor for protecting public values.
Crispin Olver, writing about the political conflicts within the City of Cape Town, noted that “Quite a few of the developers I talked to admitted, however, that they’d hired planners who’d previously worked in the City and used them to wield influence back in the metro administration. This was standard practice, I was told.” Another informant in Olver’s book noted that “the ear that the City Council gives the Western Cape Developers Forum appears to be part of a takeover of planning and development of our city by developer and building companies” who “hold massive power …”
Hugo ended his comments to the MPT with the following: “we are getting to the point where the choice is quite simple – a golf driving range edged by a concrete canal and a neglected stormwater gutter remains in place for an undetermined time or the development gets implemented with the benefits of jobs and – ya – unless you are on fixed salary – that must be probably the most important thing in everybody’s life at this point in time - Economic growth, environmental rehabilitation, the provision of social housing, commemoration of the site’s heritage …”
There you have it. Sustainable development according Japie Hugo and the LLPT.
The problem is that the City’s Environmental Management Department says the development violates so many of the City’s environmental and planning policies, it cannot be supported it its current form; the myth about social housing being a feature of the River Club proposal is so preposterous as to even fail to satisfy the planners who wrote the draft Two Rivers LSDF who said that the affordable housing component at the River Club should be at least double what is on offer; the number of long-term jobs created will not make a substantial dent on our unemployment; and how can you commemorate the site’s heritage by first destroying it and the then sequestering heritage in a created memorial which HWC describes as “designed to create meaning rather than attempt to enhance identified heritage significances”? All hard to fathom.
We will be appealing the rezoning with full force of evidence that the decision was a wrong one. Unlike the LLPT’s consultants, we don’t have to rely on criticising the credibility of the author but we will question flawed processes. It is clear from all the evidence that the Liesbeek is not a “neglected stormwater gutter” but is a “powerful historic symbol” that should be embraced, not destroyed.