On the beaches of Costa Rica…

World Wide shamein COSTA RICA

Please distributewidely….
…turtle eggsare stolen to be sold.
This must be stopped!

Disregard for law and Isimangaliso Park Authority

‘Arrest brothers for contempt’

Barbara Cole
March 19 2010

A court application for the arrest of two unauthorised developers in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, who have allegedly ignored court orders to stop their illegal construction work, was made on Thursday to the Durban High Court.

Brothers Madolwane Mthembu, 53, and Simon Mlabane Tembe, 47, known as the Tembe brothers, of KwaMazambane, Kosi Bay, had been ordered to stop construction at the Bhanga Nek Beach Camp – and restrained from continuing with any construction work in the park.

According to the papers submitted to the court, when officials of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority and its conservation manager, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, carried out a routine inspection of the illegal development site earlier this month, they found that construction was continuing.

A new type of building about 10m by 30m, divided into three sections, was going up.

The application by the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife and the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, asks that the Tembe brothers are found in contempt of court for continuing to build and failing to comply with the court orders.

Peter Hartley, a senior conservation compliance manager with Isimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, alleged in an affidavit supporting the application, that the brothers “seem to regard themselves as above the law, that they have adopted a confrontational and self-righteous approach”.

Despite having completely ignored the court orders, they continued “to develop a tourist resort and, to add insult to injury, commenced new construction as if this Honourable Court’s orders were not worth the paper they were written on”, he said.

The applicants are asking that the brothers, who are businessmen, be jailed for up to three months.

They also want them to stop building and they want the court’s authorisation to demolish the new construction at the site, which is in the ecologically sensitive Coastal Forest Reserve within the World Heritage Site, the first in South Africa.

The brothers were represented in court yesterday by Armstrong Kwitshana who handed in a notice to Justice Wallace opposing the application.

The case was adjourned by consent between the parties to March 26 for papers to be filed and a court date set for an urgent hearing.

Last month, three other unauthorised commercial developments in the same area were dismantled on the instructions of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife in the presence of the Sheriff of the High Court.

This followed these developers’ refusal to comply with similar High Court orders to demolish and rehabilitate the site.

When interdicts were granted against all four unauthorised developments last year, the applicants told the court that the developers were clearing virgin forest and putting up structures without permission or without an environmental impact assessment.