523 Signatures
1,000 for collection target
Petition addressed to: Municipal Planning Tribunal and the City of Cape Town
We call for an immediate moratorium/pause of at least 1 year on the approval and building of any new data centres in Cape Town, as well as the expansion of existing ones, until new regulations have been put in place to address the environmental, economic, societal and other impacts associated with these developments, and to allow for meaningful public participation as is our constitutional right.
Reason
The City of Cape Town Municipal Planning Tribunal is approving data centres without any meaningful public participation, and without providing information relating to issues of water- and electricity use, and without any impact assessments to find out what the environmental, social, economic, health and other impacts will be.
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We need a pause on the approval of new data centres in Cape Town (and the country!), until there has been meaningful public participation and new regulations put in place to address these, and other, questions:
How much electricity will these data centres use?
Where is this electricity coming from?
Will they be paying less for this electricity than the people of Cape Town via wheeling arrangements with independent power producers?
How do the data centres plan to deal with power outages, eg, will there be backup diesel generators installed?
How much water will the data centres use?
Where is this water coming from?
How do they plan to deal with the wastewater?
Could this land be better used for housing?
How will the data centres affect the property values in the area?
How much noise will the data centres emit?
What is the carbon footprint of the data centres?
How will the data centres contribute to the economy of South Africa? Will they be paying tax here?
How many permanent jobs will be created?
What will the “heat island” effect be from the mega data centres?
What is the impact on biodiversity in the area?
How will the data centres affect the people living in the surrounding areas?
Which companies will be using these data centres?
What is the expected “life-span” of these data centres?
How will owners of the data centres deal with the electronic waste generated?
We all need a say in which developments are approved in our city. The Municipal Planning Tribunal does not speak for the people. We ask that they pause all NEW data centre approvals, as well as applications for expansion of existing ones, AND cancel any that were approved without proper consultation and without detailed information on all the impacts.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-04-28-new-data-centres-set-to-swallow-34-of-cape-towns-current-electricity-supply/
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-02-10-the-hidden-impacts-of-ai-data-centres-on-water-climate-and-future-power-costs/
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-02-11-why-the-clouds-of-secrecy-over-the-impacts-of-sa-data-centre-growth/
https://groundup.org.za/article/giant-data-centres-get-the-first-green-light-from-cape-town-tribunal/
Thank you so much for your support, Extinction Rebellion Cape Town, Cape Town
Question to the initiator
Petition details
Petition started:
07/18/2026
Collection ends:
01/17/2027
Region:
City of Cape Town
Topic:
Environment
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new language versionWhy people sign
The utter madness and craven greed behind developing water and electricity-intensive data centers into a city or country that barely survived severe drought, water restrictions and loadshedding, AND desperately needs to provide affordable housing and jobs, shows the attitude of the city and its planning departments. This practice and lack of transparency will be remembered come the election in november.
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Data centres for AI use is impacting not only the environment, but low income households. As well as most forms of AI (especially ones that need massive data centres) are not trained ethically, using stolen materials
Until there’s better regulations in place surrounding AI- it should not be rolled out to the public in mass