DURBAN - BILLIONAIRE businessman Vivian Reddy has won a high court battle that had brought the construction of a new shopping mall and government offices in KwaDukuza to a grinding halt.
Now construction, which is expected to mean work for 2500 people, would start today, Reddy said.
He intends to sue the applicants for damages stemming from the delays in the project that would have been completed a year ago.
Durban High Court Judge Mahendra Chetty last week dismissed with costs the application brought by Concerned Citizens Group, a voluntary ratepayers’ association in KwaDukuza, and its members Cassim Mohammed Moola and Devadas Paul David.
They had taken Reddy’s company, Double Ring Trading (DRT), and the KwaDukuza Municipality to court over the R1.5 billion construction of a mall and government offices.
They went to court on February 28 to obtain an urgent interdict to stop the construction pending the outcome of a review application into the awarding of the tender and the selling of the property on which the project was to be built.
Moola and David, a legal professional, claimed in court papers that the tender process was not followed.
They claimed that the property, known as the “golf course area,” which had been sold to Reddy’s development company for R9million, was awarded on the basis of an “unsolicited bid”.
Powers
They claimed the municipality acted outside of its powers in disposing of the property and by doing so had violated the municipal finance and public finance management laws and its immovable property disposal policy.
According to the judgment, in 2013 the municipality published an invitation to tender calling for preferred developers to partner with the municipality in the development of the project site.
The municipality said the mixed-use development would contribute to the regeneration of its central business district.
The municipality placed a notice in the local media on November 18, 2016, about its intention to hold a public meeting on January 17, 2017, to consider the disposal of the site to the DRT, and the applicant’s attorney wrote to the municipality expressing concern at the disposal of the public property other than by a process of an open tender.
The municipality said in its papers that it had disposed of the property in a fair, equitable and transparent process and that the R9m paid by DRT was consistent with the market-related value, which was confirmed by a valuer.
“Despite the applicants making repeated reference to an ‘unsolicited bid’ on the part of DRT, I find much difficulty in appreciating how such a bid would form part of the overall development scheme where it is not denied that there was a public invitation to tender, which a number of bidders responded to,” the judge said.
“I fail to see on which basis it can be said that DRT acquired the property through an unsolicited bid, as this argument is mutually destructive of the acknowledgement by the applicants that the municipality did initiate a public tender process.”
Later, the judge said that rather than fixating on “unsolicited bid”, the applicants then changed course and the substance of their argument became that the sale agreement was deficient and should be set aside.
The court found that the application was misguided, veering from the contention DRT was the beneficiary of an unsolicited bid for public property to an attack on the provisions of the sale agreement.
Delay
Further, they had known about the sale to DRT since February 2016, but only chose to launch an urgent application a year later.
DRT had contended that the Concerned Citizens Group was formed to object to the development of the shopping mall and sought every opportunity to delay the construction. The judge felt the applicants’ concerns were bona fide, albeit misguided.
In a statement, Reddy said the project was expected to be completed by June next year.