Chapmans Peak reaching out into the ocean encloses
Hout Bay and forms part of the Natural World Heritage Site that is the
Table Mountain National Park. Chapman's Peak
Drive, which you can just see in the photo, is a toll road which is administered by Entilini,
a rather shadowy company that has taken
some liberties in the past with its concession. Yesterday
Capetonians were outraged when
news broke of a proposed R54 million office block to be built in the Table Mountain National Park to house a bunch of road-toll officials with large, large egos - an an eye on possible high rent tenants, who knows. And guess who finances most of it? Us, the tax-payers! It is absolutely
outrageous! My first thoughts on reading the article by Melanie Gosling in the
Cape Times was "Is it April Fool's Day?" The office block will impinge on the integrity of our national park and seriously undermine the integrity of
SANParks.(SANParks, go and read your
mission statement on your website to remind yourself what you are all about!) It will be the beginning of the end of the war against the attrition of our beleaguered natural areas and I really, really hope that it will never happen.
There will be a protest march on Sunday 22 January at 10 am, starting at both ends of
Chapmans Peak Drive.
About two thousand Capetonians gathered at Hout Bay today in a protest march from the start of Chapmans Peak Drive to the site of the proposed toll road office park that the provincial government, in a decidedly dodgy little deal, has given away to the big business company Entilini (basically Murray and Roberts) that "renovated" and administers the toll road. A memorandum expressing the misgivings of the public over the underhand little deal to give away a piece of the Table Mountain National Park AND make us, the taxpayers, pay for it, was handed over to Entilini.
Cape Town Time
