Jobs vs heritage: The battle over Amazon’s new Africa HQ

Local communities, environmentalists and activists are pushing back on a development anchored by Amazon’s Africa HQ.

For the Khoi and San — South Africa’s first inhabitants — a verdant patch of land in Cape Town embodies victory and tragedy. The two communities drove back cattle-raiding Portuguese soldiers there in 1510. But, a century and a half later, this was where Dutch settlers launched a campaign of land dispossession. Today it is again the scene of another conflict, this time over a development where construction is due to begin this month and where there will eventually be a new 70,000-square-metre Africa headquarters for United States retail giant Amazon.