The David Gleason Column
Well, the great gaming fiasco has taken yet another (almost predictable) turn for the worse. Having made up its collective mind on one occasion, the previous Gauteng executive council declared to the high court that it was entirely satisfied with its decision and then, instructed to rethink, reversed course and handed the incoming executive council a bomb primed to go bang.
Two years ago 23 serious-minded applicants indicated their determination to contest the six casino licences allocated to Gauteng. One dropped out early. The rest stayed the course, at very substantial cost.
On February 25 last year the Gauteng Gambling and Betting Board announced the first four awards: Tsogo Sun, Emfuleni Resorts on the Vaal, Afrisun in Brakpan and Global Resorts in Kempton Park. The remaining two were held over until the end of April 1998 when the board announced it had decided to give the West Rand licence to Rhino Hotel (associated with the United States-based Ramada group) and the last to Akani Egoli (at Gold Reef City).
The bomb is the Rhino award, a casino hotel resort intended to be built about 10km from the famous Sterkfontein caves, the repository of many still-unrevealed secrets of humankind’s antiquity.
These six casino licences were awarded in line with Section 31 (2) of the Gauteng Gaming and Betting Act (No 4 of 1995) which provides that: “The board shall not grant a licence … except with the concurrence of the executive council [of Gauteng’s Provincial Legislature].”
The unsuccessful contender for the West Rand licence was Silverstar which, understandably, lodged an application in the Pretoria High Court for a review of the proceedings which led to the award to Rhino.
The issue at stake is the matter of concurrence – the requirement in the Act that the executive must concur with the gambling board’s decision before a licence is issued. Silverstar contended that the executive hadn’t applied its collective mind with sufficient care to the issue.
Delivering his finding, Judge Buddy Swart made it clear that while he couldn’t fault the procedures and methods adopted by the gambling board, he was left unconvinced that the executive had provided “justifiable reasons” for its decision to concur with the board’s conclusion. What Swart was saying, in effect, was that a reading of the minutes of the executive’s deliberations left him with the feeling that a predominant view was against the award to Rhino.
He couldn’t see how it then made the jump to the decision to concur with the board. Go away, he said, and think again.
The executive did just that. Days after the general election and just ahead of the arrival of the new guard, it changed its mind. It no longer concurred.
Appearing for the executive, Clive Cohen, SC, told the Pretoria High Court that the council was perfectly satisfied with its decision to concur. A few weeks later the same council behaves in a manner chauvinists allege is peculiar to women.
Rhino MD Winston Coetzer refused to be drawn on the matter, but agrees he has been informed by the gambling board of the executive council’s lastminute change of heart. Nor will he indicate how Rhino will respond, but the logic dictates that it will now launch an action against the executive.
What ought to be of much greater concern, however, is how all the other failed applicants will react. After all, if the executive council can be obliged to change its mind once, why not five more times?
Just as I predicted weeks ago, this has the makings of a great meal for attorneys and advocates. I can already hear the familiar sound of pencils being sharpened and account files being opened. The potential for this to become an unending legal opera is ominous.
Nearly 40 years ago a young Englishwoman set out on a journey which would make her celebrated as the world’s expert on chimpanzees and their behaviour patterns. Working in the remote Gombe Stream Reserve hard against the north-east shores of Lake Tanganyika, Jane Goodall developed an understanding of man’s closest relatives unsurpassed by anyone else, and the moving accounts she penned about chimpanzee families turned her into an icon for the millions of people deeply concerned about the condition and fate of our planet.
So I note with interest that Swissair, keen to turn its R1,4-billion investment in South African Airways to good account, is among the principal sponsors of a chimpanzee sanctuary to be established within the Rhino and Lion Reserve in the Sterkfontein Valley, itself one of South Africa’s two applicants for declaration as a World Heritage site.
The proposed sanctuary is expected to cost about R6-million and will be operated by the Jane Goodall Institute (South Africa).
Assuming that Ramada Rhino Hotel gets its licence (one day), the Rhino Reserve and the sanctuary stand to benefit from what I hope will be a surge of tourism traffic.
Goodall is expected to visit the sanctuary later this month.