By Ameen Benjamin

Concerned about the well-being of Mother Earth, SAFCEI endorses the people’s response in objecting to the proposed development of the Princess Vlei for a shopping mall. This support draws from a spiritual and moral basis for supporting Earth ethics.

We wholeheartedly request that the Western Cape Provincial Government withdraw their support for the proposal and instead support the people’s proposal for Princess Vlei. The people’s proposed plan is a form of development that enhances and restores our natural ecosystem, and therefore improves our spiritual and mental wellbeing.

Aziel Gangerdine from the Provincial Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning claimed (in the Cape Times on 21 May 2012) that the proposed development will only take 4 per cent of the natural land around the Princess Vlei. According to the people’s response, the 4 per cent is a gross miscalculation. We need to further question how it is possible to justify that only a 4 per cent encroachment justifies destroying a long-standing indigenous history.  

The call for Princess Vlei to be protected came late, but the faith communities ask that this request be taken seriously. It is important to respect and preserve places which remind us of our indigenous heritage. WWF and the IUCN have highlighted the importance of sacred places for conservation. Faith communities have been involved in some of the earliest forms of habitat protection in existence, both through the preservation of particular places as sacred sites and through religious-based control systems.

A visiting Australian Islamic scholar and environmental activist (Imam Afroz Ali) at a gathering at the League of Friends of the Blind (LOFOB) hosted by LOGRA Civic (Lotus River and Grassy Park Ratepayers Association) on the 29^th May shared similar sentiments. He said that the Princess should be used to connect people with their Creator and with their environment. He continued that “the disconnection and disorientation is the engineering that takes place through colonization and additionally through apartheid. History, culture, tradition, heritage, leadership, people and land come under attack during colonisation. A colonised people’s language is degraded, made to appear inferior and even prohibited from speaking in public. The land is stolen and then systematically redesigned on the one hand as a replica of the colonised people’s homeland and in the second instance, raped and degraded for its buried natural resources”. He therefore suggested that the Princess Vlei should be built as a green space to build peace in the city and honour the culture and heritage of the indigenous people of Cape Town. 

How many shopping malls are there in our city and how many more do we need? For whose benefit is this one being built – the people or the developers? An alternative proposal is to revitalize the Princess Vlei as a safe greenbelt for recreation and for the psychological and spiritual nourishment and wellbeing of the broader community. We also need biodiversity corridors within our urban spaces which play a crucial function in restoring and maintaining the integrity of our unique floral Kingdom. The power of the natural environment on our spiritual and psychological wellbeing is beyond measurement. A healthy and spiritually connected society would provide a positive and powerful contribution to the wellbeing of our country and the Earth. We urge the Provincial Government to listen to what the people are calling for, ignore the promise of short term profits and agree to leave Princess Vlei intact for our children’s children and nature’s heritage.

For more information and press releases, visit  www.bottomroadsanctuary.co.za

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