Dear > The OCA held a successful AGM last Tuesday and some of the reports from that meeting are to be found below. For those of you who support our campaign to stop the River Club development from going ahead, we have at last been granted the dates for our high court injunction to be…
Category: Liesbeek River Project
Infilling of the Black River angers activists
Bulelwa Payi – 12 December 2021 The First Nations Khoi people, civic and environmental organisations are calling on the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) to urgently declare a protection order against the River Club development. This comes in the wake of the infilling of the Black River in Observatory, regarded as sacred by the…
River Club was not on Amazon’s short list – court papers
Stece Kretzman – 2 December 2021 Opponents of the R4.5 billion property development at the confluence of the Liesbeek and Black rivers in Cape Town have sought an urgent interdict to prevent building going ahead. The project includes the new regional headquarters of corporate giant Amazon, and opponents have been warned that blocking the development…
River Club: Utopian fantasies of a high-tech concrete jungle in a city of broken infrastructures and fractured communities
By Steven Robins – 22 Nov 2021 While the details of the land-use planning decision to rezone the River Club land for development has yet to be dissected in the courtroom, what has become very clear is that the economic and political relations between the developers and their civil society opponents are highly unequal. After…
#MakeAmazonPay campaign hits Cape Town
By Bulelwa Payi – Nov 28, 2021 When activists and employees of Amazon staged protests against the tech giant across the world on Black Friday, calls on the company to end its “colonial indifference”, also echoed across a contested site in Observatory. A group of indigenous people, land activists and civic associations waved placards on…
Protest against Amazon Inc’s plans to build on sacred indigenous land
Activists and indigenous groups representing Khoi and San communities held a protest outside the River Club in Observatory, Cape Town. They are opposing the plans by American e-commerce giant, Amazon Inc, to build its African headquarters on land currently occupied by the River Club which is considered sacred tribal and indigenous land. WATCH YOUTUBE VIDEO…
Black Friday: Cape groups upset over Amazon development in Cape Town, to join worldwide protest
Mwangi Githahu – Nov 25 2021 Cape Town – Environmental and indigenous groups are using the Black Friday shopping rush to put a spotlight on Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, and the building of its African headquarters on the banks of the Liesbeeck River, regarded by many as “sacred” ground. World-wide, protesters from more…
Interdict hearing placed on hold for River Club redevelopment
24 November 2021 Cape Town – The application for an interdict to halt the redevelopment of the Liesbeek Riverine in the The River Club precinct, has been placed on hold as there is no judge available to hear the matter. Proceedings were set to take place later this week at the Cape High Court. The…
Indigenous communities protest against Amazon Inc’s proposed African head office
Protests continued at the construction site of a property development in Observatory, Cape Town, where American shopping giant Amazon Inc will be the anchor tenant on completion of the development. The site is where the first battle between the Portuguese setters and indigenous people took place on 1 March 1510, in the Battle of Salt…
Jeff Bezos blasted in Cape Town development protest
26 November 2021 Protesters wearing Jeffery Bezos masks stood on a Cape Town street corner on Friday and railed against a planned office precinct development that will house the African headquarters of retail giant Amazon. Bezos, founder of Amazon and the second richest man in the world, according to the Forbes Rich List, has been…