By Ant Katz

The long and at time arduous journey forced upon Rabbi Gavin Michal, his charming family and fiercely loyal congregation all came to an anti-climactic end Wednesday morning after the City of Joburg capitulated and withdrew their objections to the rezoning of his property to be used for religious purposes.

Their hero, town planner Rick Raven, is a consummate professional. He had to consistently remind the concerned congregation, through Rabbi Michal, that they would prevail in the end.

After all the frustrations and fears that the community went through, including almost two years of being threatened that they would have to close the doors of their beloved Shul, The City essentially accepted the opinion of advocate Gilbert Marcus SC which was given to them ten months ago.

Marcus found in no uncertain terms that the City’s first tribunal that heard the rezoning application had been irregular in numerous ways. Furthermore, said Marcus in his opinion, the City of Joburg’s reason for refusing to hear the Shul’s second application was quite incorrect as the Council’s senior attorney misunderstood the law. If the City followed their attorney’s advice they would be acting illegally said Marcus.

Notwithstanding Marcus’ advice and opinion, the City’s head of Town Planning found himself between a rock and a hard place and, apparently under severe political pressure, ignored Marcus’ advice and, as was all-but admitted by the City’s lawyer at yesterday’s appeal hearing, made the wrong decision.

This decision, which was transmitted to the Shul’s professional team in June this year, and once again caused them to panic. Again they were being told to shut their doors.

It was then that Rick Raven exercised his option to get a fair hearing but to approach the Gauteng Provincial Townships Board on appeal.

Raven himself told MyShtetl on a number of occasions that he smelled a rat in the City Of Joburg’s handling of the matter. He even went on the record at one stage saying that he had never encountered this level of political interference in the activities of the town planning department. Everyone was aware that the chief objector was a powerful ANC councilor and member of the City’s Mayoral Committee.

But Raven kept everyone calm to the best of his ability. He always knew that the Provincial Townships Board was an apolitical organ. After what the Shul had endured over the years, it was quite understandable that they found it difficult that any authority could or would give them a fair hearing. Raven, however did know that.

It was this appeal hearing that took place on Wednesday 30 November.

Two of the objectors to the application for rezoning, Clr Christine Walters and Marion Laserson, had applied to attend the hearing and give evidence – even paying the prescribed R350 fee each. In the event, neither of them appeared.

The attorney representing the City of Joburg, Cedric van der Merwe, told the Gauteng Townships Board under the chairmanship of the highly experienced Rudi “I-solve-problems” Erasmus, that the Joburg City Council conceded that there previous refusal to hear the Shul’s second application under the “Functus officio” excuse had been an error. Van der Merwe said that the City had agreed that the matter could be discussed on its merits.

Actually, conceded van der Merwe, “we should have heard this matter at Council, but neglected to.” So, said Van der Merwe “from a town planning perspective we (City of Joburg) are prepared to allow the matter to be heard again.”

And so, after all then strain and suffering of this passionate community of Jews, the City Council raised no objection to the Shul’s application for rezoning and all that was left to do was to iron out some simple formalities – which was done.

The Townships Board team was in effect a sub-committee who will make the recommendation to the full Board that the application be approved.

This was a resounding victory for the Shul as it means that the Gauteng Townships Board is not referring the application back to the City Council for a fair hearing, it is actually making the decision itself.

“You want a consent use and you have done everything you have been asked to,” Rudi Erasmus told Rick Raven and Rabbi Michal. He then asked everyone except his committee to leave. “We will discuss this in committee,” he said.

The committee applied their minds for a matter of mere minutes before joining the rest to a delightful kosher finger-lunch provided by the Shul’s attorney (and congregant) Gerald Nochumsohn in the bar of the plush Rosebank premises of Nochumsohn and Teper.

It was all done and dusted.

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BST APPEAL - site inspection at Shul - Chair Rudi Erasmus, centre, is briefed by Raven, right, and Rabbi at left.JPG