Two recent articles in the Daily Maverick present new perspectives on the current fight to preserve environmental and heritage resources at the River Club. They highlight how important it is for humankind to think about living in harmony with the natural world, rather than subjugating the environment to an insatiable but always ultimately unsustainable development path.
On the 7th of July, Cormac Cullinan, the director of Cullinan & Associates, the law firm representing our court case, author of Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, and founder of the Wild Law Institute, which works to advance and protect the rights of every member of the Earth Community, published a reflection on what the River Club case means for ecological justice. He argued that “The worldviews, aspirations and values of the dominant cultures are driving humanity along a trajectory that leads to disaster …” which is primarily due to the prioritisation of economic growth above all else thus causing “… climate chaos, pervasive pollution, the degradation of ecosystems and the catastrophic decline in the numbers and diversity of other species.” Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the River Club redevelopment where authorisations that ignore climate resilience, the adverse impacts on the riverine valley and the irreversible heritage harms and loss of the sense of place of this riverine valley continue to drive us on an unsustainable trajectory.
He proposed that the restoration of ecological health, learning how to coexist in harmony within the community of life we call “Earth,” should be reflected in our environmental and planning decision-making. More importantly, there is much we can learn from First Nations peoples who have for hundreds of years existed intimately within their environments, and still to this day have a profound connection to their sacred spaces. We should “… listen carefully and learn from their perspectives. This is important to promote reconciliation and healing within our divided society. It also provides an opportunity to relearn perspectives and practices that foster an intimate connection between people and place based on relationships of deep respect, reciprocity and kinship.” Cullinan frames this as a “… kind of wisdom cultures need to be ecologically viable.”
A second article in the Daily Maverick, also on the 7th July, by Lalou Meltzer, retired Director of Social History at Iziko Museums and past Board Member for the District Six Museum, analysed the same redevelopment conflict from a historical perspective and arrived at almost the same conclusion.
She mapped the way in which early contact between settlers and indigenous people was one where the balance of power shifted to the Dutch colonists. In early years, the practice of Khoi pastoralists arriving to the Liesbeek Valley every summer with their families to seek water and pasturage for their herds of cattle and fat-tailed sheep, dominated the landscape – as it had done for hundreds of years. In fact, Jan van Riebeek noted “… with a degree of amazement, how the land stretching inland from near the mouth of the Salt River was on an occasion filled with so many cattle and sheep that it was difficult to estimate the numbers present or to see the ground. The attraction of the land lay in the wetlands, vleis and rivers which fed the summer pasturages.”
It is from this landscape that the Dutch brutally displaced the Khoi through deployment of Roman-Dutch law to grab land and through the imposition of fences, forts and military force. But there can be no doubt that the area between the Two Rivers is what is left of the once extensive places of home of the Khoe people. The Two Rivers is the only recognised remnant — much of the rest has been buried and forgotten under suburban residential or office development.
Meltzer argues that the importance of the River Club site “… lies in its context as an integral part of the Two Rivers site, constituting the last bit of the heartland of the Liesbeek River before joining with the Black River to form the Salt River ... The area cannot [therefore] be further damaged by the development of concrete towers and dividing up the remaining land into parcels of so-called greater and lesser heritage or environmental importance, based, in fact, on the short-term needs of private profit and state coffers.” She further points out how “… the lands of the rivers were of core social and economic importance to Khoe people and continue still today to bear meanings of spirituality and identity, linked to memory, orality and intangible history.”
The inextricable link between the environment and the intangible heritage of the redevelopment site, articulated in the voices of Khoi activists and leaders, gives us reason to reflect on this “… powerful story of indigenous dispossession” and how we exercise “… custodianship of our part of our place.” The deep and profound connection of indigenous people’s connections to water, nature and the environment should be celebrated through declaring the Two Rivers Urban Park an National Heritage site.
This is the kind of wisdom that Cormac Cullinan describes as essential for our future to be ecologically viable.
But the fight to defend this site and what it could offer South Africa needs your support.
Please help us fund our legal costs to continue this crucial fight for heritage and environmental justice by contributing whatever you can afford at our fundraising site.
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