/ 21 December 2006

Legal wrangling over Cape Town’s World Cup stadium

Cape Town mayor Helen Zille on Wednesday evening rejected a claim by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool that the city had committed a major procedural blunder over the proposed Green Point 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium.

An angry Rasool earlier in the day called on Zille to summon an urgent council meeting to rectify what he said was an error threatening the already-fragile construction timetable for the R2,5-billion project.

He told journalists that instead of the council giving formal consent for the building of the stadium, it had incorrectly referred the decision to provincial planning minister Tasneem Essop.

This had accompanied its application for rezoning from ”public open space” to ”community facilities”.

He said the matter would now have to go to the council for consent, followed by a 21-day period for objections, and only then could Essop consider the zoning.

”I am … dismayed that the City of Cape Town has either misread the law or that they have allowed incompetence into the process, so much so, that we now have this delay,” Rasool said.

”This mistake should never have happened in the first place.”

However Zille told the domestic press agency Sapa that the council had in fact approved the construction, but made it conditional on Essop’s granting of the rezoning.

Zille said it had been done in this way because of a legal opinion that granting permission for the construction before the rezoning and its appeals had been dealt with could be seen as pre-empting the outcome of that process, and an act of bad faith.

”I suggest that the premier and minister Essop be a bit more careful and read all the decisions taken in council pertaining to the stadium,” she said.

”I think when they do they may realise that they have egg on their faces.”

She said that for ”absolute certainty”, she had re-submitted the wording of the resolution to a senior counsel.

According to the council minutes of December 7, the council conditionally approved a ”closure of public place”, and a deviation from the Green Point development framework ”in order to establish the multi-purpose stadium and ancillary/incidental uses”.

Chairperson of the 2010 Local Organising Committee Irvin Khoza warned last week that if construction did not start in January, Cape Town could kiss its World Cup semifinal goodbye.

”We are not going to be remembered as people who procrastinate, who cannot deliver and who waste time,” Khoza said.

Rasool said he was ”particularly angry” given that as recently as November 29 the city rejected a proposal to partner with the province and business community through a special purpose vehicle.

”In rejecting this they asserted that they were a competent authority, they were capacitated to manage the process, and that they will manage on their own,” he said.

”Maybe there will be greater humility now to accept assistance from the province.”

Convening the council either before the end of the year, or very early in January would reassure Fifa that the city was committed to the World Cup and to completing the stadium in time.

The council has already held its last scheduled meeting of the year, and the next one is only at the end of January. Rasool said he had spoken to Local Organising Committee chief executive Danny Jordaan, who was in Zurich, to brief him on what was happening, and Jordaan had asked for a formal ”letter of comfort” explaining what was being done to remedy the situation.

Jordaan had in turn promised to brief Fifa boss Sepp Blatter.

Rasool said had Essop’s legal team not picked up this ”critical error”, the process would have been open to challenge in what was already a ”very litigious situation”.

The Green Point Common Association, a grouping of residents, has threatened legal action to block construction.

Responding to Zille’s ”egg on their faces” comment, Rasool replied in a statement: ”This is one issue where I don’t mind being wrong, in fact, I wish that the mayor was right so that we can get on with making a final decision about building the stadium.

”However, having engaged our lawyers and again gone through the documentation, we are strengthened in our belief that the city did not make a decision as it was meant to do. Instead mayor Zille has missed the fact that the lawmakers in the city are the competent authority in this case.”

He said as further evidence of this his office had found no documentary evidence that the city had called for appeals and entertained them in the prescribed 21-day period.

”We urge the mayor to allow her legal team to engage with ours so that we can resolve this matter and save the world cup for Cape Town.”

With the Soccer World Cup critical to job creation and investment, Rasool asked that the city present a ”watertight legal case” to provincial minister Essop to enable her to take a final decision. – Sapa