Developers of a high-end residential estate on the Helshoogte Pass outside Stellenbosch can restart work after the Western Cape High Court dismissed a case brought by a local interest group.

The ruling effectively clears the way for development at Botmaskop Estate to resume, after an interdict granted last year. 

News24 reports that plans for the estate include 77 residential units on a property of about 35 hectares on the Botmaskop mountainside, about five minutes outside Stellenbosch.

As previously reported, the development was opposed by a group of concerned citizens, the Stellenbosch Interest Group (SIG), which obtained the interdict in April last year.

At the time of the interdict, no residential dwellings had been built, but roads, retaining walls, a security gate house, entrance precinct and other infrastructure had already been constructed.

In a new ruling, Judge Nobahle Mangcu-Lockwood dismissed the dozen or so grounds SIG put forward to try to stop the development.

Mangcu-Lockwood found that works had already commenced under the 2003 environmental authorisation. ‘The works had already commenced, as already discussed earlier, within two years of issuing the 2003 EA.’

‘We welcome the High Court’s ruling, and are pleased that (it) has now vindicated the position we have maintained throughout,’ said Werner Roux, the CEO of Botmaskop and Staytus Collection, the group developing the estate.

Many of SIG’s arguments hinged on the environmental authorisation (EA) for the project, first granted in 2003. While SIG had argued that the original EA had lapsed or was no longer valid, the argument failed to convince Mangcu-Lockwood.

‘It is common cause that, in the intervening 23 years since it was granted, the 2003 EA has never been withdrawn by the MEC or any other authority (…),’ she said, adding that development started within the prescribed two years. 

News24 notes that Anton Bredell, Western Cape MEC for Local Government, Environmental Affairs & Development Planning, praised the ruling, saying the judgment confirmed that environmental authorisations cannot simply be regarded as having lapsed because many years have passed.

Full News24 report

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