Cape Town - Opposition councillors are outraged that the City of Cape Town is to spend R30 million upgrading a historic building for the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation – and plans to levy a rent of just R700 a year.
Councillors voiced their anger during a meeting of the full council on Thursday.
With a 50-year lease on the table, this would amount to a financial return of just R35 000 for the municipality, said Demetrius Dudley of the ACDP.
Councillors said the deal would amount to “mismanagement of public funds and property”.
Last month, mayor Patricia de Lille announced plans to let the two-century-old Granary building in Buitenkant Street to the foundation. The building has been home to a magistrate’s court and a women’s prison.
At the time the mayor said: “A building so rich in history, once traced with violence and justice, now has the prospect of representing the work of a man who has come to symbolise both hope and peace.”
And a grateful Tutu said that while the heritage building could have been used to generate income for the city, the municipality proposed to allow it to be used by organisations such as his. It would also
house Tutu’s archival material.
The plan to let the foundation use the Granary was mooted after the foundation was unable to use a site it had leased on the Foreshore near the CTICC.
At the time deputy mayor Ian Neilson said the plan would take a couple of months for the lease proposal to work its way through council processes.
But on Thursday when the plan went before the full council, councillors were not happy.
The proposed rental emerged during a debate on a recommendation to put the lease out for public comment.
Councillors were also unhappy that the rental amount and the cost of the refurbishment had been excluded from the report to be considered by the full council, although the refurbishment amount had been previously published in the media.
“How can we send this out for public participation if we don’t have the information?” asked Xolani Sotashe of the ANC.
Dudley agreed, saying: “Nowhere in the report is the cost to the ratepayer ever mentioned.”
The report dealt with a proposal to cancel the Tutu Foundation’s current lease on the Foreshore site to enable the foundation to use the Granary.
The Foreshore site was leased to the Desmond Tutu Peace Trust in 2006 for a peace centre, but in his report to the council Michael Sims, of the city’s finance directorate, said the project had proved too expensive.
But Dudley said the transfer of the lease, only after a R30m boost from the city, was a “deal made in heaven that proved the strategic intent of this administration”.
“This deal on paper does more to celebrate the Tutu family legacy than the opportunities the poor, the homeless and the unemployed will ever realise. Does the R30m outlay equate to a positive financial outcome and income-deriving from such a valuable asset? We think not,” Dudley said.
Tony Ehrenreich, of the ANC, was also concerned that details about the rental and refurbishment were omitted from the report.
“We will not support this. The Archbishop’s name is being used so that the friends of the DA can make money out of construction.”
He said the ANC supported the broad objectives of the Tutu Foundation, but would not endorse the use of R30m of city funds.
Ian Neilson, mayoral committee member for finance, confirmed that the city would get the “valuable” piece of land in front of the convention centre in exchange for the foundation moving to Buitenkant Street.
Dudley said this detail was also excluded from the report before the council on Thursday. “If there is a lease for property A, and I want property B, surely there must be two separate contracts?”
Neilson said the details about the R30m upgrade of the Granary were noted in the city’s budget. He emphasised that the lease transfer proposal still had to go out for public comment.
De Lille pointed out that Tutu was made a freeman of the city in 1998, and that the then-mayor resigned when some councillors voted against the award. In her mayoral speech on Thursday, De Lille said the Granary would represent the work of a man who had come to symbolise hope and peace.
The ACDP tried unsuccessfully to have the item withdrawn from the agenda. Although the recommendation to start a public participation process about the lease transfer was approved, several councillors objected or abstained from voting.
“The meagre and meaningless motivations will not suffice when this proposal is made public. I sincerely hope that ratepayers will come out in numbers to object to, in my opinion, the mismanagement of not only public funds but property,” said Dudley.
Cape Argus