Cape Town – Unhappy community members have allegedly looted and stripped a former Sol Kerzner resort in the Eastern Cape.
The Citizen reports that Mary Brennan, CEO of MahalaX, the company that used to lease the resort from Prudhoe Community Development Trust, said burglaries at the resort had escalated recently.
“The site has been subjected to successive burglaries over the past few months, with an escalation over the past few days,” Brennan said.
The report added that shortly after MahalaX took occupation of the Fish River Resort site on 1 April 2022 with the intention of turning it into a film location, a group arrived claiming they were the rightful owners of the site.
However, the issue of ownership, which had been contested for 22 years, had been settled by the Land Claims Court in favour of the Prudhoe Community Development Trust.
Over the next few months, protests intensified with protesters challenging the trust by reportedly blocking the resort entrance and intimidating staff while demanding jobs.
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It was further reported that the group established control of the premises in August 2022 and evicted the staff and 48 members of a British film crew in the process of producing a reality show.
Despite winning a temporary interdict preventing the group from interfering in the business, MahalaX eventually had to “walk away” from the project.
TimesLIVE reported that this weekend, vehicles with trailers loaded goods worth millions of rand from the resort.
The report added that police spokesperson Brig Thembinkosi Kinana said items stolen from the resort included stoves, fridges, television sets and IT equipment.
“It is further alleged that vehicles with trailers were used to load items from the resort,” Kinana said. “The office areas were also broken into and all computers and projectors stolen. A Quantum minibus was completely stripped on the premises. The damage incurred including the stolen property is estimated to be millions of rand.”
