When activists and employees of Amazon staged protests against the tech giant across the world on Black Friday, calls on the company to end its "colonial indifference", also echoed across a contested site in Observatory.
A group of indigenous people, land activists and civic associations waved placards on the banks of the Liesbeek and Black rivers to highlight their opposition to the River Club development where Amazon will be an anchor tenant.
The protest action was to reclaim the river, regarded as a heritage significance for first nation Khoi groups.
In some countries across the globe Amazon workers staged protests in support of demands for better wages, working conditions, transparency and sustainability.
In Cape Town, a court battle to interdict the developers, the Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust (LLPT), from going ahead with construction on the site, could not go ahead as scheduled this week.
The interdict application would be followed by another court attempt to review and declare the approval decisions by the provincial government and the City of Cape Town unlawful.
The protesters handed over a petition with more than 57 600 signatures to a caricature of former Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, warning him that the river could not be buried to make way for the Amazon Africa headquarters.
"The mass movement is saying no to the destruction of sacred heritage and no to environmental degradation.
"The struggle against the River Club development is a global struggle because Amazon doesn’t appear to care what impact it has on workers, communities and the environment in whatever country it operates," said the Liesbeek Action Campaign.
The campaign said despite professing a deep concern for the environment, Amazon’s carbon emissions grew by 15% in 2019 and 19% in 2021 and Bezos' space venture planned to fill in more than 4 hectares of Florida wetlands for a rocket-manufacturing testing facility.
The River Club development site has been nominated for provincial and national heritage status and was also part of the National Khoi and San Heritage Route, a presidential legacy project.
In a letter to Bezos, spokesperson for the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, Tauriq Jenkins , likened Amazon to the colonisation of indigenous people by the Dutch East India Company.
"Humanitarian and environmental concerns are merely annoying flies to be swatted aside, while ancestral land is ripped up and converted into money to line pockets of those who do not need more but whose appetites seem insatiable.
"Naturally, we fight them every step of the way. Fight their lawyers, who will bat for whatever team pays them, in the battleground of the courts," Jenkins said.
Jenkins also wrote that a mere stone's throw from the river, the first African observatory was built.
"In the language of the Khoi,a resonant translation for this deeply sacred area below the foothills of Table Mountain means ’the place of the stars’", said Jenkins, adding that the Observatory suburb was the "precinct of humanity, and you are part of it in the same way we are".
"The proposed development would devastate the sensitive wetlands and might very well drive the leopard toad, indigenous only to these wetlands, into extinction," he warned.
Jenkins said the development would also exacerbate the traffic gridlocks currently experienced in the mornings and afternoons.
" A 20-minute drive to work is likely to turn into an hour-and-a-half-long traffic jam, both coming and going
"The developers were offered several other sites with far better commuting opportunities and with much less environmental impact, but to no avail," he said.
"Now that you know a bit more about the facts behind the future Amazon headquarters, please, Jeff, make the call. Select any of the other 11 places you could build your beachhead," Jenkins said.
The trust said the campaign against the River Club project was "based on misinformation and falsehoods".
It said the property as part of the redevelopment, R38 million would be used to rehabilitate the riverine corridor, including replacing the canal in which the river flowed along the property into a " naturalised" riverine environment.
According to the trust, over 60% of the project would be "retained as green space".
"The basic assessment for the redevelopment was peer reviewed by an independent leading carbon and climate change advisory firm, Promethium Carbon, and affirms that the project, including the rehabilitation of the Liesbeek River, will not impact negatively on climate change. The green principles practices being applied in the construction and building phases make this one of the few sustainable green developments in the country," the trust said.