Well, Black Friday on the Liesbeek wasn’t what Amazon were expecting. The Liesbeek Action Campaign joined up with the global Make Amazon Pay network to protest Amazon’s insatiable desire to imprint itself on planet Earth at all costs. We turned Black Friday into a MakeAmazonPay day along with thousands of workers and activists in over 20 countries across the globe, who took action to stand up against exploitation of workers, of our communities, and of our planet. Amazon continues to feign silence in the face of 150 000 square metres of concrete turning a sacred floodplain into a high-end headquarters for Amazon Web Services.

We handed over our petition of more than 57000 signatures to “Jeff” (see picture above) with a letter appealing to him to do the right thing. Weirdly, Jeff Bezos thinks that spending US$5 billion to zip into space for a few minutes is a worthwhile endeavour which can be made up by donating US$2 billion to climate change mitigation globally. In accepting the petition, our “Jeff” mused that just as Amazon workers paid for his joy ride into space, so, too, are the ratepayers and taxpayers of Cape Town and the Western Cape paying for Amazon’s colonisation of the Liesbeek. Because it is our rates and taxes that are paying the City of Cape Town’s and Provincial Department’s expensive lawyers to oppose the court application.

Likening Amazon to the colonial Dutch East India Company, High Commissioner for the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, Tauriq Jenkins noted in the letter to “Jeff” that “Humanitarian and environmental concerns are merely annoying flies to be swatted aside, while ancestral land is ripped up and converted into money to line pockets of those who do not need more but whose appetites seem insatiable.” 

Black Friday is the quintessential distillation of consumer culture, taken to its extreme. Not surprisingly, Amazon has been at the forefront of this “never ending culture war” aiming to be the “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company,” all the while engaging in dubious labour practices. Black Friday didn’t exist in other countries including South Africa until about 10 years ago when Amazon and other corporates exported this epitome of consumerism – also described as a depraved ritual – to markets other than the USA.

We want the Two Rivers Urban Park, including the River Club land, to be declared a heritage resource, not an ode to consumerism or excessive financial gain for some.

We are still awaiting the date for the high court interdict. We are hopeful that the justice system will not let us down and will confirm a date soon, as the developers are ploughing ahead as fast as they can by laying massive quantities of concrete.

To support out court case, we need your financial support to interdict the redevelopment from going ahead and to get a proper plan in place that will make this a heritage precinct. Please consider assisting us with the legal fees. You can contribute at our fundraising site.

For more information, please visit our website and follow the Liesbeek Action Campaign on twitter: @LiesbeekAction.

Now is the time to Make the Liesbeek Matter!