Following the move of Western Province Rugby's professional teams to their new home at DHL Stadium in early 2021, Newlands Stadium has ceased to be a rugby venue.

Since the agreement was put in place over three years ago, WP Rugby has been engaged in finalising the sale of the stadium.

However, EWN reports that this was halted after a group of former players, led by former-Springbok Wynand Claassen submitted an application to have the stadium declared a heritage site.

WP Rugby Union administrators yesterday said that if successful it could ‘mean the end of WP Rugby as we know it’.

‘The heritage application, that was made by Mr Wynand Claassen, put a halt to any of the proceedings. The companies that were interested in obtaining the properties around Newlands said they cannot proceed any further until the heritage matter has been resolved,’ said WP Rugby administrator Rian Oberholzer.

He added that ‘nobody is going to buy the property when there is a risk that afterward, they cannot utilise it for whatever purposes they bought it for’.

This matter is set to be put forward for public input in the near future.

Full EWN report

A Daily Maverick analysis notes that Claassen’s heritage application is a strange claim for a sports stadium that has no significant historic buildings to speak of (the grandstands were upgraded and rebuilt several times over its 130-year existence).

Only the old Mill House, which stands apart from the main stadium, qualifies as a heritage building. 

In 2019, Investec Property Division signed heads of agreement with the WPRFU to redevelop Newlands. Claassen didn’t lodge a heritage objection then. And he didn’t do it when a little-known company called Flyt paid for the development rights after the WPRFU turned its back on Investec in mid-2020.

Former WPRFU president Zelt Marais sold the Flyt plan to the union’s General Council on the basis that the WPRFU would receive an immediate R112m loan from Dream World Investments (Flyt’s parent company) to cover its existing debts to Remgro and Investec.

The DM notes that council backed Marais and walked away from Investec.

Dream World paid R52.97m to Investec Bank on 21 August 2020, and on the same day paid R57.76m to Remgro to clear its debts.

As security for the loan, 11 properties owned by the WPRFU were registered with Dream World.

According to subsequent court papers lodged by Dream World at the Western Cape High Court in March 2021, the WPRFU ‘acknowledged that it was indebted to Dream World in the sum of R250m’.

The WPRFU and Flyt became 50% partners in a new company set up with Flyt to redevelop Newlands and another plot called Brookside.

Despite all this information in the public domain, Claassen didn’t lodge a heritage claim.

And there was no hint of a heritage claim in the following two years, even after the Flyt deal turned sour and new developers were sought.

Full analysis on the Daily Maverick site