Cape Town businessman in trouble again over R3m beach house

When Cape Town businessman Parkin Emslie’s R3m beach house near Elands Bay on the west coast burnt down two years ago, he promptly rebuilt it.

There was one big problem though: the original house had been illegally constructed, and his application for official condonation in order to make the house legal had not yet been approved.

Now, the province’s environmental authorities have queried the legality of the new house as well, and have told him they may require him to demolish it and totally rehabilitate the site.

Emslie’s property, owned by his company Ranger Outback Promotions, is one of 10 erven that constitute a private nature reserve on a long, narrow 97-hectare strip on Mosselbaai Farm, in the coastal zone about 3km south of Elands Bay.

His original house was built in 2011-12 without authorisation in terms of the National Environmental Management Act (Nema) – a legal requirement because it was constructed within the proclaimed 100m coastal strip. The house was just 35m from the high-water mark and too close to the coastal dunes, according to the environmental authorities.

Also, no building plans had been approved by the Cederberg Municipality before construction started, and Emslie had also failed to ask Heritage Western Cape for permission for the new house. This was a legal requirement because the property includes an ancient archaeological deposit that was proclaimed as a provincial heritage site in April 2009.

Last year, Emslie acknowledged these transgressions and paid a R175,000 fine so that he could file an application for condonation of the illegal building work: a so-called section 24G application in terms of the Nema seeking ex post facto planning, environmental and heritage approvals for the illegal construction from the provincial department of environmental affairs and development planning.

If this application had failed, he could have been ordered to demolish the house completely and rehabilitate the site. This was recommended by both the national environment department and the local municipality, who asked the province to refuse Emslie’s application for condonation.

But when he built the replacement house after the fire, the application was still being assessed and no decision had yet been made by the province.

The long delay in the assessment process was partly because of heritage concerns about the midden. It is described as “the only open site with remains from the early pottery period (3,000-to-2,000 years before the present) in the Elands Bay and Lambert's Bay areas” and “probably the largest among the 13 mega-middens known to exist along the west coast of South Africa”.

In November 2018, the department told Ranger Outback Promotions that the fine of R175,000 must be paid before the new application could be processed. In a letter signed by advocate Charmaine Maré, the director of environmental governance, the company was told that the fine had to be paid “before the competent authority may consider your report and thereafter issue or refuse an environmental authorisation”.

The fine was duly paid, but when inspectors visited the property again in November last year, they found that the original house had burnt down and Emslie had rebuilt it – in the process apparently committing a second round of environmental transgressions.

So earlier this month the department started a second round of legal action concerning the house, sending a letter informing Emslie of its intention to issue a formal compliance notice.

The letter states that during an inspection, it was confirmed that he had started “various activities within 100m of the high-water mark, which includes the clearing of vegetation, construction work, excavation and/or infilling of material (sand), and the placing of material on sand dunes which is preventing the free movement of sand, without the requisite environmental authorisation”.

Pointing out that starting any Nema-listed activity without permission carries a maximum penalty of a R10m fine and/or 10 years in jail, the letter informed Emslie that it was the department’s intention to issue a compliance notice that would instruct him to:

• immediately cease the illegal activities;
• investigate, assess and evaluate of the listed activities on the environment;
• rehabilitate the entire site to its original condition; and
• carry out any other measure necessary to rectify the effects of the unlawful activity.

It gave Emslie seven days to make written representations as to why such a compliance notice should not be issued.

If he wished to keep his rebuilt house, he could apply for environmental authorisation through a new section 24G application. But the department was not obliged to approve the application and could still order that the house be demolished and the property rehabilitated - and could possibly also institute criminal proceedings “should circumstances so require”.

Emslie did not respond to an e-mailed invitation by GroundUp to comment on these latest developments.

According to the minutes of a site meeting on May 13 2013 about the first section 24G application, attended by Emslie and representatives of various authorities and interested parties, the businessman openly admitted the initial environmental transgressions.

“I made wrong here, so I need to fix my wrong,” he is recorded as saying.

In a 2013 newspaper interview with this writer, Emslie acknowledged the illegality of the first construction work. “Ag, I’m not going to tell you a story. I was a naughty boy doing it,” the businessman said then, but defended the development on conservation grounds.

This article was first published by GroundUp.