The suspended rezoning of land at King Air Industria for a proposed hyperscale data centre precinct has become a test of what evidence Cape Town should require before granting development rights to resource-intensive digital infrastructure.
The outcome could shape how other South African municipalities assess similar applications, according to the Wireless Access Providers’ Association (WAPA).
On 14 July, Cape Town’s municipal planning tribunal voted 4-1 to rezone the land. The approval covers roughly 174 MW across two facilities. The Housing Assembly and UK non-profit Foxglove, represented by the Legal Resources Centre, appealed, arguing that the tribunal acted without water-consumption or grid-demand figures, deferred questions about diesel generators, emissions and noise, and did not assess the combined impact of facilities covering about 120 000 m².
The City has confirmed that the approval is suspended until executive mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, acting as the planning appeals authority, decides the appeal. No decision date has been announced.
Equinix, the operator named in the project, says the Cape Town site is a long-term land bank, that it has no immediate plans to develop it and that it has submitted no planning or development applications.
“None of this is an argument against data centres. South Africa needs local AI compute for sovereignty, latency and jobs, and much of the industry already builds responsibly, with closed-loop and dry cooling that sips rather than gulps. The problem is that nobody has to prove it before the rights are granted. ‘Trust us’ is not a planning condition,” says Paul Colmer, executive member of WAPA.
The distinction between rezoning and construction is central to the appeal. Section 35(1) of Cape Town’s planning by-law provides that a use right vests in the land rather than the applicant, while section 35(4) binds a successor-in-title to the conditions of approval. If the rezoning survives, data centre rights will remain attached to the precinct regardless of who ultimately owns or develops it.
The City is drafting refined development guidelines for large data centre applications, but has not confirmed what the guidelines will require or whether they will apply to applications already in the system. The tribunal’s dissenting member, planner Wally Johnstone, says the public has a right to know how an approval will affect grid stability and access to electricity.
At national level, the National Data and Cloud Policy 2024 provides an investment framework, while government expects investors to give municipalities short-, medium- and long-term water and electricity forecasts and explain how they will offset demand.
The South African Human Rights Commission has separately opened an inquiry into the industry’s human-rights implications, including electricity demand, water use, land use, transparency and community participation.
Colmer says the minimum requirements should be clear: “Disclosure before approval: binding water, power, generator and noise figures on the record. Cumulative assessment: judge the precinct, not each building as if it lives alone. And enforceable conditions: mitigation written into the approval or a contract, so it survives a change of owner.”