Building work is quiet, for now, on £200m project that pits different visions of South Africa’s future against one another
moke curls into the air, a drum beats, the dance begins, a chant is raised. Ten metres away, cars howl past on a busy road, drivers unaware of the sacred ritual taking place in the centre of a bustling South African city.
The money in question are the potential profits to be made from a 15-hectare site in Cape Town’s Observatory neighbourhood that is being turned into a complex that will house homes, shops, a hotel, conference centre and businesses. By far the most important tenant at the £200m project will be Amazon, which hopes to base its expanding operations inFor now cranes and bulldozers are still.
Campaigners say the construction site is at the confluence of two sacred rivers and on land seized by the Dutch East India Company, a powerful trading company run by wealthy merchants in the Netherlands and often seen as the first modern multinational, in 1657. They make the obvious comparison to the present day.
A coalition of Indigenous groups calling itself the Western Cape First Nations Collective has backed the project and engaged with the developers who have promised to include a “world class” heritage centre in the development, staffed and run by educators from the Khoi and Sān, which will celebrate their culture.
The site area was previously home to a golf driving range and bar, built over an infill site for industrial and railway refuse, next to the confluence of the two now heavily polluted, canalised rivers.
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