Amazon, Khoisan face off over Cape Town headquarters, by LoniPrinsloo1
Cape Town, at the base of Table Mountain and set back from a tangle of freeways, the Liesbeek and Black rivers meet in a small stretch of marshland. The 37-acre plot isn’t pristine — it lies next to a railyard and was until recently home to a golf course — but for centuries, this land has been sacred ground for the Khoisan, a Southern African tribe that traces its lineage back more than 100 000 years.
With the economy stalling, Amazon also brings the promise of jobs and development in a city that desperately needs them. Unemployment is above 30% in South Africa, and nearly 27% in Cape Town. City government representatives say that the project will indirectly create jobs for 19 000 people, including more than 5 200 construction workers. Cape Town’s leaders are thrilled with the arrangement.
It wasn’t the first time Amazon encountered obstacles when trying to set up shop outside the US. Plans to build large logistics hubs in France were scrapped on at least four occasions in the past 18 months due to political, environmental and financial concerns.
It hasn’t been all smiles for opponents of the Cape Town development that will house Amazon’s African headquarters when completed Both the city and river valley have complicated histories. Europeans arrived in what is now Cape Town in the 15th century, and over the next several hundred years, local populations were brutally subjected to the rise of the slave trade, the introduction of apartheid and government efforts to limit black property ownership. When the Dutch settled along the Liesbeek in the 17th century, parcels of the valley were allocated to farmers and cut off from the Khoisan.
The project has also become a PR headache. While many Cape Town residents are excited by the opportunities Amazon can offer others have been put off by how the multinational handled this process. Ryan Dick, a software developer who lives in Cape Town, said he doesn’t “see how putting thousands of tons of concrete on top of a wetland is saving anything”.
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