#MakeAmazonPay hits Cape

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 the banks of the Liesbeek and Black Rivers, to highlight their opposition to the River Club development where Amazon will be an anchor tenant.

The protest action was to reclaim the river, regarded as a heritage significance for first nation Khoi groups.

In some countries across the globe Amazon workers staged protests in support of demands for better wages, working conditions, transparency and sustainability.

In Cape Town, a court battle to interdict the developers, the Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust (LLPT), from going ahead with construction on the site, could not go ahead as scheduled this week.

The interdict application would be followed by another court attempt to review and declare the approval decisions by the provincial government and the City of Cape Town unlawful.

The protesters handed over a petition with more than 57 600 signatures to a caricature of former Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, warning him that the river could not be buried to make way for the Amazon Africa headquarters.

“The mass movement is saying no to the destruction of sacred heritage

and no to environmental degradation.

“The struggle against the River Club development is a global struggle because Amazon doesn’t appear to care what impact it has on workers, communities and the environment in whatever country it operates,” said the Liesbeek Action Campaign.

The campaign said despite professing a deep concern for the environment, Amazon’s carbon emissions grew by 15% in 2019 and 19% in 2021 and Bezos’ space venture planned to fill in more than 4 hectares of Florida wetlands for a rocket manufacturing testing facility.

The River Club development site has been nominated for provincial and national heritage status and was also part of the National Khoi and San Heritage Route, a presidential legacy project.

In a letter to Bezos, spokesperson for the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin

Indigenous Traditional Council,Tauriq Jenkins, likened Amazon to the colonisation of indigenous people by the Dutch East India Company.

“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.

“Naturally, we fight them every step of the way. Fight their lawyers, who will bat for whatever team pays them, in the battleground of the courts,” Jenkins said.

“The proposed development would devastate the sensitive wetlands and might very well drive the leopard toad, indigenous only to these wetlands, into extinction,” he warned.

The trust said the campaign against the River Club project was “based on misinformation and falsehoods”.

It said the property as part of the redevelopment, R38 million would be used to rehabilitate the riverine corridor, including replacing the canal in which the river flowed along the property into a “naturalised” riverine environment.

“The Basic Assessment for the redevelopment was peer-reviewed by an independent leading carbon and climate change advisory firm, Promethium Carbon, and affirms that the project, including the rehabilitation of the Liesbeek River, will not impact negatively on climate change. The green principles practices being applied in the construction and building phases make this one of the few sustainable green developments in the country,” the trust said.