{"id":917961,"date":"2022-01-20T11:09:16","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T11:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/news\/2022\/01\/20\/amazon-may-quit-african-hq-deal-if-blocked-cape-town-court-hears\/"},"modified":"2022-01-20T11:09:16","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T11:09:16","slug":"amazon-may-quit-african-hq-deal-if-blocked-cape-town-court-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/20\/amazon-may-quit-african-hq-deal-if-blocked-cape-town-court-hears\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon may quit African HQ deal if blocked, Cape Town court hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Johannesburg \u2013 Online retail giant Amazon could pull out of a deal to create its Africa headquarters in Cape Town, if a legal challenge by indigenous activists is allowed to proceed, a Cape Town court heard Thursday.<\/p>\n

Construction is already underway for Amazon’s four-billion-rand (262-million-dollar, 231-million-euro) African HQ, on land that Khoisan communities hold sacred as a site of their early resistance to European colonisers in 1510.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Several Khoisan groups have thrown their support behind the project, after the developers agreed to build a heritage, cultural and media centre that will be operated by indigenous groups.<\/p>\n

But the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council and a neighbourhood association have asked the Western Cape High Court to halt construction.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for the property developers, the Liesbeek Leisure Property Trust, told the court that Amazon has signalled it will pull out of the project if the delay is granted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MORE ON THIS<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIf Amazon has indicated, even directly, that it’s not going to tolerate any further delays, that’s not hearsay evidence,\u201d advocate Sean Rosenberg told the court. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s direct evidence of what Amazon’s intentions are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe much more likely possibility is that this project will not go ahead, given what has happened up till now, given Amazon’s impatience, given Amazon’s indication,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon itself is not named in the case. The hearing is expected to conclude Friday.<\/p>\n

Until two years ago, the site had hosted a golf course.<\/p>\n

City authorities last year approved the construction of a nine-storey business and residential complex on a greenfield site that will be anchored by Amazon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Its offices will provide total floor space of 70,000 square metres (7.5 million feet) \u2013 equivalent to almost 10 football pitches.<\/p>\n

The court challenge is questioning the environmental approvals for the site.<\/p>\n

Once hunter-gatherers known under the now-discarded label of Bushmen, the Khoisan suffered deeply under colonisation and apartheid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many in their community say they still endure wide social inequalities and economic opportunities today, and their past remains overlooked.<\/p>\n

Agence France-Presse (AFP)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Johannesburg \u2013 Online retail giant Amazon could pull out of a deal to create its Africa headquarters in Cape Town, if a legal challenge by indigenous activists is allowed to proceed, a Cape Town court heard Thursday. Construction is already underway for Amazon’s four-billion-rand (262-million-dollar, 231-million-euro) African HQ, on land that Khoisan communities hold sacred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}