that the Watson family wants to build in the Eastern Cape, before assessing strong differences of opinion from scientists worried about the threat to bird life.
Pretorius asked Agrizzi about the farms where the wind farm is planned and for confirmation that they are surrounded by the Groendal nature reserve.
Not surprisingly, Smallie’s report did not find favour with the wind farm developers: Inyanda Energy Projects Ltd, a company established in July 2012 that has four members of the Watson family as its directors – Ronald and Valence Watson, two of Gavin’s three younger brothers; Ronnie’s daughter Tandy Snead; and Valence’s son Jared.On the advice of their lawyers, Inyanda then appointed a British bird consultant, Dr Steve Percival, to review Smallie’s report.
The DEA’s rejection letter stated: “… this Department requests that the Applicant appoint an independent avifaunal specialist to externally peer review all work undertaken by the two avifaunal specialists and make final conclusions and recommendations on the avifaunal impacts.” But then everything went quiet, and for a couple of months Jenkins heard nothing. Eventually he learnt from an outside source in mid-April that the DEA had issued environmental approval for the wind farm. This had been recorded in a letter dated 5 April 2018, signed by Sabelo Malaza, chief director: integrated environmental authorisations.
A former employee of Bosasa who asked not to be named out of fear for the Watsons – “They are quite an aggressive family,” he said – told GroundUp that he had started work with the company in 2015 and had attended early morning prayer sessions hosted by chief executive Gavin Watson.