Cape Town suspends decision on Equinix data centers — Daily Maverick
Lev Shevtsov 20 September 2026 22:36
In Cape Town, South Africa, the Municipal Planning Tribunal’s (MPT) July 14 decision approving Equinix data centers was legally suspended after an internal appeal was filed on August 6. The appeal was submitted by the civic movement Housing Assembly and the UK non-profit organization Foxglove, represented by the Legal Resources Centre, Daily Maverick reports.
Until the appeal procedure is completed, the MPT decision cannot be implemented. Cape Town Deputy Mayor Eddie Andrews confirmed that the city authorities are developing updated guidelines for considering applications to build large data centers.
Appellants’ arguments
Foxglove says that key information necessary for a lawful decision was lacking during the consideration of the application. The organization’s head of communications, Tom Hegarty, said that the appellants do not know whether an environmental impact assessment of the project was conducted, while the materials provided by Equinix, in their view, contained significant gaps.
MPS member and urban planner Wally Johnston, who did not support the decision, said during the hearings that the tribunal was considering granting land-use rights for a 160 MVA facility without basic electrical engineering calculations and an assessment of network flows. According to the publication, the MPT relied on confirmation of a cost estimate from Cape Town Electricity and information that the developer had paid about 33 million rand in shared grid costs.
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Equinix’s position and the site’s status
Equinix said that the 327,000-square-meter site it acquired in Cape Town is a long-term land reserve. The company stated that it has no immediate development plans and has not submitted planning or development applications. It also promised to take into account feedback from authorities and local communities should the project be implemented in the future.
At the same time, Daily Maverick notes that the change in land use designation and development parameters approved by the MPT remain tied to the site regardless of whether Equinix begins construction. The 122,545-square-meter facility was defined in the documents as a warehouse with electronic equipment; Foxglove and Johnston consider this classification inappropriate for a high-capacity data center.
In a written response to parliamentary questions, South Africa’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Technologies stated that, in the department’s view, data center investors should provide municipalities with short-, medium-, and long-term forecasts of water and electricity needs, as well as plans to offset such a burden.
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