HERMANUS – Tomorrow morning’s Mayoral Committee meeting here is bound to be interesting. It is the first time the controversial tenders for the De Mond and Yacht Club sites will be discussed in an open forum (as much as the Mayco meeting is an open forum). The tender for the Kleinmond Caravan Park is also on the agenda.
Both the De Mond and Yacht Club tenders were earlier awarded to Point Caravan Resort (Pty) Ltd, a company which Mayco member for Infrastructure and Development, Clinton Lerm have direct business links with. Besides questions around Lerm’s interest in the matter, there’s also been widespread concern about the lack of public participation in the tenders. The Municipality has maintained throughout that the advertisement of the tenders was in itself public participation, which is ludicrous.
Questions are also being asked about the unusually long terms of the two leases. The lease for the De Mond site is 45 years and for the Yacht Club 25 years. Lease terms for public resorts are usually ten years, like in the case of the Kleinmond Caravan Park.
Meanwhile a veil of secrecy has been pulled over the plans of Point Caravan for the two sites. Besides a select few in the Mayco and a number of municipal officials, nobody actually knows what is being planned at De Mond and the Yacht Club. In the absence of any information, many believe that the two sites are going to be commercially exploited.
The Yacht Club site in Fisherhaven has been trashed over the past few weeks. This, after the Yacht Club was told to evacuate the site by 30 June this year when the new leaseholders, Point Caravan, took over. They apparently decided not to renew the security contract for the site and this was the result.
It defies the imagination that Mayco members are expected to support a recommendation on which they have little or no information. The same strategy is seemingly planned for later this month at the council meeting. The plan is apparently to force through the approval of the tenders on the back of the DA’s majority in the council.
It might turn out to be far more complicated than this. We know that various interested and affected parties met in Hermanus at the weekend to discuss the possibility of litigation against Overstrand Municipality. As far as we can establish the wheels have already been set in motion.
