Attempts by Johannesburg City Council (JCC) to sell the Huddle Park wetland in Linksfield, to an empowerment consortium for development before the completion of a thorough environmental impact assessment (EIA) process may have dire environmental consequences for the residents of Alexandra township.
The park is one of the few remaining open wetland spaces in Johannesburg. The proposed development will require water to be drained away from the wetland, and channelled into the Jukskei river, greatly increasing the river’s load and putting Alex’s shack dwellers at even greater risk of flooding.
The developer’s environmental consultants have submitted a “draft scoping report” to the Gauteng department of agriculture, conservation and environment. A scoping report is a preliminary and less comprehensive document than an EIA.
“In it, they recommend that the scoping report suffices, and that the department dispense with the conducting of a full EIA,” says Raymond Druker, chairperson of the Huddle Park and Environs Anti-Degradation (Head) League, which was formed to stall the sale of it to developers who want to turn the park into a golf estate with residential and retail elements.
Huddle Park is zoned as a public space, which means the city cannot rezone it for residential purposes without the approval of the provincial department of agriculture, conservation and environment, and a thorough environmental assessment process, argues Druker.
Marian Laserson, an architect with town planning experience who lives close to the park, says that while the council may sell the public open space, owing to the size of the park they must do an EIA before applying for the land to be rezoned. She says the council is refusing to say how much the land is valued at and how much it will sell it to the developers for. She adds that 1 100 members of the public objected to the sale, which means the sale must now be taken to council’s town planning tribunal.
But the sale of Huddle Park seems to be a fait accompli. A report on the city’s website says: “The development of the Huddle Park golf course — well on track with an approved bidder in the city’s sights …” The preferred bidder is Tiyani, a consortium led by Investec and Standard Bank, with Peter Malungani of the Peu Group of companies and Cyril Ramaphosa’s Shanduka group as empowerment partners. Construction is scheduled to get under way in August this year.
If the development goes ahead, this will increase the load on the Jukskei river, argues Paul Fairall, an environmental consultant working for Head.
Wetlands store water and slowly release it. This process slows the water’s momentum and greatly reduces the risk of floods. “We will cause floods downstream,” says Fairall. “People may have no warning, especially if [floods] come at night. We will have taken the flood plain away and made a bullet of the rain.”
The Jukskei has its source near the Ellis Park stadium in Bertrams, and runs encased in concrete underground for about 8km, fed by storm water run-off from the city of Johannesburg.
While the Huddle Park wetland is currently home to a golf course, it has had minimal environmental impact, having left intact most of the wetland’s indigenous reeds and sedges that act as biofilters. The wetland supports a wide variety of species such as honey badgers, fish eagles and otters that come to feed in the wetland, explains Fairall.
The wetland also plays an important role in filtering pollutants out of the water, and its destruction could lead to dirtier water downstream, for communities as far afield as the Hartbeespoort Dam and XaiXai in Mozambique.
Nthatisi Modingoane, spokesperson for the city, dismissed concerns that the city is rushing through the sale, saying “the decision on the sale of the land rests with the landowner, as in all instances, in this case, the city.”
Sizwe Matshikiza, spokesperson for the department, says the council is entitled to sell the land without approval from the department, and that it may be exempted from doing a full EIA. “The department does encourage the protection of public open spaces within the urban areas and therefore considers each application for development in public space on its own merits,” he said.
Head says it is keen to know how the development is envisaged and how it will affect the environment, but has been unable to get hold of the master plan for the development, which will enable it to measure the environmental impact more accurately. Druker says the council refuses to allow the group to inspect the development master plan document but that he has sought a legal opinion and has been told that this refusal is unlawful under the Promotion of Access to Information Act. “We have been told that we have a right to challenge this. We intend doing so.”
Modingoane refused to comment, saying only that the planning document had not been released for inspection “because it contains sensitive information such as the developer’s financial information and intellectual property”.