Two years ago the City asked us to allow Vodacom inspectors to visit the 1st Claremont hall to “see if the signal strength was strong enough”. Of course this was just an excuse to survey a possible site for a new cellphone mast, and this week it was confirmed when neighbours told us that the City plans to take a large chunk of our grounds away in order for Vodacom to erect a mast. No, the City think it was worth telling us about these plans until we asked, even though 1st Claremont Scouts have leased these grounds for 107 years.
Also, the City’s advertisement is highly misleading. It shows a fairly stubby mast surrounded by a fence not much bigger than a garden shed. Disingenuously, the caption says “NTS” – not to scale. And wow, it really is not to scale. The planned mast is 30m high – ten storeys! And the space they want to take from us is 8.5 x 10m, about the size of four double garages.
This is what they showed the neighbours on their advertisement:
But Scouts (and neighbours) are no fools, and we have a neighbour who works in the film industry and knows a thing or two about stuff, and they put together this “To Scale” image to show how the real height of a 30m mast would dominate the neighbourhood:
So now we have horrified neighbours and Scout families using words like “monstrosity”, “abomination”, “totally inappropriate”, and more.
For the record, this is where they plan to put the mast. Not even in the corner, but right in the middle of our grounds:
And no, the grounds next door are no longer vacant. It is currently filled with Padel courts, but is owned by the Claremont Beneficiary Trust, a land claimants group, and longer term it is earmarked for residential development. A mast of this size will be devastating to that development, and will be yet another blow to the land claimants who were dispossessed of nearby land by the Group Areas Act under apartheid.
Of course we are objecting to these plans, and we are asking all our Scout families to join the neighbours in objecting to this mast.
- You can find the 1st Claremont Scout Group objection to the mast HERE.
- This is the official City of Cape Town page advertising “Lease of City-owned property in Camps Bay and Claremont“. The full document is here. No, the City doesn’t even mention that the grounds are currently leased to Scouts, and have been for more than 100 years.
Please join us in objecting. To do that, you can:
- Submit your comments online.
- Send written submissions to:
Property Management
PO Box 4557
Cape Town
8000 - Email cellmast.objection@capetown.gov.za
To object, you MUST contact the City via one of these channels, and you MUST do this before the closing date of 20 October 2023.
