Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has let it slip that the controversial sale of the Good Hope Centre is no longer set to go to a Nigerian church. 

Speaking in an interview with community talk station Radio 786, he revealed that the City is now considering the second-highest bidder, a Muslim institution, to acquire the property. 

Before that revelation, when he was asked whether the City would be reviewing the sale, Hill-Lewis explained that the sale to the original highest bidder fell through because of financial constraints. 

“It’s not that we’re reviewing the sale, it’s the person… I don’t think that the person actually had the money that they said they had and so they were unable to pay for it,” said Hill-Lewis.  

News of Good Hope Centre’s auction came under public and political scrutiny, especially after Pastor John Anosike of Spirit Revelation Ecclesia announced that his church had bought the property.  

ALSO READ: Not So Fast: City audits Good Hope Centre auction after church claims winning bid – Smile 90.4FM

After noting that the centre would not be “taken over by a Nigerian church”, Hill-Lewis then disclosed that the City was considering the second-highest bidder. 

“The first highest bidder was a church, the second highest bidder was a mosque.” 

He added that the church’s winning bid was R135 million, while the Muslim institution offered R130 million.  

Hill-Lewis also noted that the second bidder’s development proposal includes affordable accommodation on the site, addressing criticism that housing had not been incorporated into the original plans.  

“Now we start to go through the money checks, and everything for the second bidder. Let’s now hope that they do have the finances to,” said Hill-Lewis.  

The City of Cape Town says it is currently reviewing an external due diligence report on the Good Hope Centre’s bidding process.

“A full report will serve before the relevant Council structure in due course. The City is unable to comment further on bidders or process details while this is under consideration.”

This article has been updated to include comment from the City of Cape Town. 

The DA has announced plans to establish its own detective unit to investigate crime in the city.

The party’s election campaign took the form of an anti-crime march in Delft on Wednesday, in which the party’s local leadership, including DA Federal Leader and city Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, the City’s Safety and Security Chief JP Smith and Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, took part.

Hill-Lewis then took the opportunity to pledge to establish the country’s first metro police detective department in Cape Town, but only after the 4 November local government elections.

“After the fourth of November, with your support, we will not only be on the streets making the arrests, we will investigate that case, and we will have a case file that is complete, that’s got all the evidence to make sure that that criminal goes behind bars,” said Hill-Lewis.

The DA also adopted the slogan “Catch, Convict, Clean Up” as part of its campaign to tackle crime in Cape Town.

“It’s not good enough to just catch, we catching criminals everyday, only for the courts to let them out the next day again. We have to get the second part right, and that is convict. And we have to get the third part right, which is clean up the corrupt cops out of the SAPS,” added Hill-Lewis.

The DA-run City of Cape Town has long called for the devolution of policing powers. There have, however, been multiple delays for the City in that regard, and Smith said he thinks “it’s an idea whose time has come”.

“We’ve never awaited for national government, or anybody else to fix our problems; we fix our own problems as far as we can, and within our means, we’ve really done everything that local government can do, punching well above our weight range,” said Smith.