Durban - The Save our Berea organisation has asked the public protector to investigate whether proper procedures involving building plans and rezoning approvals have been deliberately flouted by the eThekwini Municipality.
The community activist group’s founder Kevin Dunkley said it had decided to lay a complaint with the public protector after the Durban High Court recently ordered the partial demolition of a R60 million development at 317 Currie Road.
Durban High Court Judge Esther Steyn found that residents in the area had not been properly consulted about a rezoning of the plot to allow for the construction of what residents said was a “monstrous” building.
The municipality conceded in court that the process had not been handled correctly and it was likely to face a hefty damages claim from the developers if the building was demolished.
The developers of the building, Serengeti Rise Industries, were taken to court by Berea residents who said they had been unaware of a rezoning application which allowed the site to be used for the huge development.
The developers had initially sent a plan to the city for a four- storey development which had been approved.
This was later changed and a deviation plan and rezoning of the site, to accommodate a nine-storey block of flats, were approved by the municipality.
The organisation said there had been many other decisions made by the city’s town planning committee that had gone against existing town planning schemes and where numerous objections had been ignored.
“This case was not an isolated incident, nor is it a one-off mistake. In the two years of existence of Save the Berea there have been numerous other properties where the same ‘mistakes’ were made,” Dunkley said.
In the Currie Road matter, residents could afford to go to court, which had not been possible in all the cases.
“In the case of Currie Road, the residents involved had the means to go to court, but there are numerous other incidents where residents did not have the funds to do so. So we would like the public protector to find out what is going on.”
He said the organisation believed “something was drastically wrong” with the processes and residents were “fed up”.
“Residents have taken a stand and we just hope the public protector will investigate our complaint.”
Yesterday, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s spokeswoman, Kgalalelo Masibi, confirmed that the complaint had been received.
She said it would go through the standard assessment process to establish whether the public protector had jurisdiction to deal with the matter and whether there was any merit to the claims.
She said after this process had been completed, Madonsela’s office would decide whether the matter warranted an investigation.
Mercury