20 December 2006Cape Town - Cape Town mayor Helen Zille on Wednesday evening rejected a claim by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool that the city has committed a major procedural blunder over the proposed Green Point 2010 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 R2.5bn project.
He told journalists that instead of itself giving formal consent for the building of the stadium, the council had incorrectly referred the decision to provincial planning MEC 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 to 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."
'Act of bad faith'
However, Zille told Sapa that the council had in fact approved the construction, but made it conditional on Essop's granting of the rezoning.
It was done this way because of 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 senior counsel.
According to the council minutes of December 7, 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".
Semi-final warning
Chair 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 semi-final 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.
'Letter of comfort'
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.
Source: News24
