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Blaauwklippen

• Portion 510/837 of about 36.436 hectares: the main vineyard, restaurant with online presence here;
• Portion 527/3 of about 14.791 hectares, located south-east of Jamestown but north of Stellenrust Road,
• Portion 1457/0 of 33.3864 hectares, the currently unused land immediately south of Paradyskloof along the R44;
• Portion 369/17 of 26.67 hectares, south of the L'Hermitage suburb
• Portions 52, 53, 54 and 71 of Farm 510 (four of the so-called tuin erwe) in Jamestown

• Some documents on the 2019-2021 Jamestown water erven development proposal
  • Pre-submission consultation on 12 September 2019, including attendance list
  • Letter from Heritage Western Cape of 28 May 2018, saying that no further action is required regarding heritage issues of the proposal. That letter, however, preceded the detailed Heritage Inventory Phase 4 as mirrored by the Stellenbosch Heritage Foundation. Phase 4 includes pages in which the Jamestown tuinerwe are singled out for high heritage status.
  • The Phase 4 Heritage Inventory was highly praised by the Stellenbosch mayor during her Mayor's address of 23 October 2019. In terms of the Stellenbosch Land Use Planning By-Law, the Mayor is also the "appeal authority" i.e. she is the final arbiter in the appeal which was heard on 27 May 2021.
  • Heritage Western Cape subsequently approved the Phase 4 HI in March 2019. This formed the basis for the comments by town planning officials as set out below.
    
    
  • First, however, the application went through the usual steps, starting with the Notice of proposal of June 2019 which resulted in some letters of objection, including one by FSM and a more complete one by Jamestown Erfenis with some pertinent annexures including the background from 1989, objections by the Jamestown Methodist Church, the 1966 objection by residents against the proclamation of Jamestown as a white area in terms of the apartheid Group Areas Act, which seems to have been effective to stop the reproclamation. See also the 1989 Webersvallei Structure Plan and comments by Hermann Stipp.
  • At that time, Eikestadnuus already carried an article asking whether this proposal would cost Jamestown its town character.
    
    
  • Both the 2019 Draft MSDF of June 2019 and the 2019 Final MSDF as of November 2019 had incorporated important elements of the Heritage Inventory into the plans. The Jamestown heritage status and its incorporation into the MSDF constituted one of the arguments by the municipal Department of Planning planning report of November 2019 which relied on an assessment of August 2019 long provided to the developer and included the relevant Heritage Inventory parts on Jamestown.
  • The development proposal itself was motivated multiple times by consultant TV3 as in, for example, this motivational report and this earlier response to the August 2019 assessment. These documents are, as usual, quite selective in the information used and provided.
    
    
  • The Stellenbosch Municipal Planning Tribunal (MPT) considered the proposal on 27 November 2020. The full MPT agenda item comprises 321 pages and 18MB. At that meeting, the MPT decided to refuse the application, and a corresponding decision letter was sent to BAE on 2 December 2020.
  • Not surprisingly, this led to an irate appeal by Blaauwklippen Agricultural Estates in December 2020. The multiple allegations and threats were given a detailed rebuttal by FSM by FSM in January 2021; there were also again important comments by Jamestown Erfenis highlighting the ongoing process of gentrification and how the original residents are being driven out by rising taxes.
  • One of the strongest arguments by BAE, namely that the erven in question fall inside the existing urban edge, is correct but tends to see the urban edge as a right rather than a necessary but not sufficient condition for development. See the highlighted text on the Urban Edge on Page 144 of the 2019 MSDF.
    
    
  • As stated, the Mayor acts as the appeal authority. In that capacity, she subsequently held an oral hearing on 27 May 2021. BAE, FSM and Stellenbosch Erfenis were invited to make oral submissions and pre-oral written submissions such as the FSM pre-hearing submission focusing on some details, while Jamestown Erfenis also made a submission. Naturally the BAE presentation repeated earlier motivations and now also relied on a purported exchange taken from the sound recording of the MPT meeting of 27 November.
  • The appeal decision was signed on 13 July 2021 and communicated to FSM and Jamestown erfenis on 14 July. The decision upheld the BAE appeal and revoked the decision by the Municipal Planning Tribunal and simultaneously overruled the determination of the municipal Department of Planning. The "reasons" given follow closely those submitted by BAE's legal team; they can be found on "Page 5 of 6" (page 6 of the PDF document) of said appeal decision. The last reason provided is an entirely empty promise, which no doubt will be tested and broken in the near future:
    Reason 8: "The decision will not create a precedent as every application has to be judged on its own merits"
  • If the present application had really been "judged on its own merits", the mayor is implying that neither the municipal Department of Planning nor the Municipal Planning Tribunal "judged the application on its merits". In other words, the Mayor knows better than the professionals. No doubt the next series of Jamestown and other development applications "merits" will be "judged" in a similar way.
  • This appeal decision has created a precedent. With the development approved on dubious "merits", Jamestown stands to lose its last chance of maintaining its character and return the tuin erwe to their agricultural purposes. The continuing process of creating gated estates for the rich will accelerate, while the poorer residents will eventually have to move out.
  • Given that the appellant (BAE) relied heavily on a selective extract quote from the sound recording of the MPT meeting of 27 November 2020, FSM after the appeal hearing also submitted a PAIA request for access to that recording. This recording was provided on or about 26 May 2021.
  • A 17 October 2021 story in the Sunday Times (see also original link) states that

    The DA mayor of Stellenbosch approved [the BAE appeal] just weeks after the farm hosted and bankrolled two events for the political party.

    Four days later, on 21 October 2021, the local Stellenbosch newspaper Eikestadnuus quoted extensively from the Jamestown Erfenis objections to the development and its approval. While the article itself makes no reference to the alleged hosting of the Democratic Alliance by Blaauwklippen estate, the municipal spokesperson Stuart Grobbelaar is quoted in the Eikestadnuus article as stating that

    In die belang van deursigtigheid is die beslissingsbriewe vir die publiek oop en op die munisipale webwerf beskikbaar. Dit hou geensins verband met partypolitieke-aktiwiteite nie. Enige voorstelle van partydige inmenging is 'n lasterlike, heeltemal ongegronde aanval op die integriteit van die burgemeester.

    which translates as

    In the interest of transparency, the decision letters are open to the public and available on the municipal website. It [the appeal decision?] is in no way connected with party-political activities. Any suggestions of party interference is a libellous, completely unfounded attack on the integrity of the mayor.