U-turn on sale of crown jewel

Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has backtracked on the sale of one of Cape Town’s crown jewels, the Somerset Hospital site.

At a media conference recently, Rasool announced that the provincial Cabinet had decided after a two-and-half-hour special sitting to lease the land for 99 years.

Rasool has been under heavy pressure from the Western Cape legislature and opposition politicians over his personal involvement in discussions about the sale of the hospital site for an estimated R1,1-billion to a Dubai-based consortium — before any tender process was announced.

He is alleged to have discussed the sale with potential buyers during a visit to Dubai last November. Rasool is yet to reveal who paid for this trip, but has denied impropriety. He has also denied claims that he instructed senior housing officials to attend two meetings at which the sale was discussed as a done deal for the Arab buyers.

At Wednesday’s media conference, he described the new plan as ‘revolutionary. Given the highly competitive and contested environment that has developed over the last two months, we decided that this matter should be discussed at [provincial executive] level, rather than at a departmental level,” he said.

‘We decided, given that this is a prized possession of the public, to put the site out for lease and not for sale. This will ensure the site is not lost to the public sector.”

Asked about the allegations made against him, he said: ‘Let’s leave the negative [issues]. Everything that happened is overshadowed by this announcement. Forget about those things — those issues are 2006 issues. This is now 2007.”

Rasool said the site would include a 260-bed state hospital and ‘gap-housing” for lower- and middle-income families earning between R3 000 and R7 000 a month, as well as provide for ‘the participation of broad-based black economic empowerment groups” through a large commercial area and luxury hotel.

Cosatu’s provincial secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, called Rasool’s lease announcement ‘a con”. Said Ehrenreich: ‘It’s a move in the right direction and a victory for communities who objected to government selling off land to their friends, their political connections and BEE groups. But they took a good move and turned it into smoke and mirrors with a 99-year lease.” The lease effectively removed control over how the property would be used.

Robin Carlisle, a Democratic Alliance provincial legislature member who questioned Rasool on his personal involvement in the sale talks, also said that there was little difference between a 99-year lease and a sale.

‘The cash flows will, in the end, be the same, and neither process offers greater or lesser leverage. It’s a typical Rasool attempt to make the ugly questions go away. It is time for him to come absolutely clean,” Carlisle said.

He added that if there was a continued lack of transparency, it was ‘only a matter of time before Scopa [the standing committee on public accounts], the DA and his own ANC provincial executive crack this case — with consequences that will almost certainly include the premier’s exit from public life.

‘In the meantime, the shenanigans of Rasool and his Cabinet have significantly prejudiced the orderly, proper and public disposal of the Somerset site.”