Bushman Sands deal falters

[caption id="attachment_222445" align="aligncenter" width="637"] The struggling Bushman Sands golf estate.
Picture: Guy Rogers[/caption]

A multimillion-rand deal to resurrect the struggling Bushman Sands golf estate, with potential to uplift the Alicedale community, is hanging in the balance.

Blue-chip Scottish investor Andrew Summers wants to transform the estate into an innovative golf and education academy to add to the string of successful academies he has already established in the US and Mexico. The proposal has been widely hailed as one that could rejuvenate Alicedale and create jobs.

But with all role players bar the East Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) apparently behind Summers’s proposal, agreement has not yet been reached. Summers said more delay meant further deterioration of the course.

“Every week threatens the viability of the property and therefore my ability to operate a junior golf academy there.”

Bushman Sands is presently co-owned by the ECDC and Christian- based hospitality, education and media giant River Group, which each has a 50% sharehold. Besides its Gary Player-designed golf course, the estate includes a hotel and private plots and homes.

But the once flourishing enterprise has ground to a halt. Born in Nigeria, Summers, 55, was brought up in the Eastern Cape after his Scottish missionary father was transferred here. After university in Scotland he worked for 20 years in investment before retiring to focus on his philanthropic and sporting passions – education, youth and golf.

[caption id="attachment_222430" align="aligncenter" width="549"] Erin Brits of Beyond Adventure, River Group’s gap year education programme, which has an office at Bushman Sands
Picture: Guy Rogers[/caption]

Responding from the US, he said the idea was that promising young golfers enrolled at the new Eastern Cape Junior Golf Academy would attend Henrik Kanise Combined School in Alicedale, which his Calabar Trust was already supporting.

“The best students would receive scholarships to our USbased academies, with the expectation of full golf scholarships to US universities.”

Summers said he was open to all proposals. River Group chief financial officer Greg Clur confirmed his company had been in talks with Summers about his proposed golf academy.

“We are not opposed to giving serious consideration to such an initiative as . . . it would most likely benefit the region and all interests involved.”

Asked if River Group was considering selling its portion of Bushman Sands, he said this was “possible but . . . no firm proposal has been concluded or accepted at time of writing.”

ECDC spokeswoman Ikhona Mvaphantsi said the corporation’s understanding was that the proposed deal was between Summers and River Group.

“ECDC is not a partner in the proposed deal.”

But Bushman Sands Homeowners Association chairman Grant Hechter said the corporation’s input was key.

“They have everything to do with it. This proposal is a dream come true and everyone wants it to go through, but the ECDC, as 50% shareholder, has to give it its blessing and so far that has not been forthcoming.”

Ecotourism boss Adrian Gardiner, whose Mantis Collection started Bushman Sands in 2004 before selling it, said Summers’s project posed a huge opportunity and he would inject R5-million to help make it work and support an added conservation aspect.