The dirty tricks are out again. In full force and naked.
Over the weekend of the 15 May 2021, a set of emails was anonymously distributed to hundreds of recipients from an email address firstnationscollective@gmail.com. The first email attached a copy of the 16-page spread associated with Chief Zenzile Khoisan known as First Nation News, in which the authors lauded the River Club development, presented the First Nations Collective as the voice of Khoi and afforded Jody Aufrichtig, of LLPT and the driver behind the development, a platform to propagate his views about the development. It is inescapable that this email source looked, smelled and felt like it was from the First Nations Collective, even though it did not identify itself.
The second email was titled “First Nations Call for Suspension of UCT Prof Leslie London” and contained allegations against my person including accusing me of being ‘racist’, a ‘so-called professor’, guilty of pursuing ‘egotistical agendas and vendettas,’ and patronizing. I am accused of ‘deploying the First Nations narrative against our First Nation struggles’ for verbalizing the fact that many Khoi groups are vehemently opposed to this development.
The anonymous email went on to call on the University of Cape Town to discipline me and attached files with similarly malicious statements on a letterhead of the First Nations Collective which gave the River Club as the address for the Collective. More disturbingly, the accusations of racism and being a threat to the interests of Khoi indigenous people was accompanied by the author listing my personal details in the body of the email. Defaming me anonymously is one thing. Placing my home address in a public email to third parties without my permission is prima facie illegal.
The University of Cape Town has subsequently come out to publicly dismiss these claims, confirm its support for me and to express concern over “any practice of anonymous, broadcast emails being sent to attack an academic (or any citizen) without substantiation” and its hope that “a more meaningful civil discourse can be used going forward to help resolve the differences between parties and vested interests around the proposed River Club development.”
But given a climate of threat and statements on Chief Zenzile Khoisan’s facebook page calling for Observatory liberals opposing the development to be ‘tarred and feathered’ and chased out of Observatory, it is quite clear these anonymous emails were intended to intimidate. The matter is now with the South African Police Services for investigation.
A third email from the same email address was also sent to the OCA lawyers threatening our lawyers that if they continued to appear for us, they would be ‘complicit.’ When our lawyers wrote back asking the sender to identify themselves, the email bounced back as the email address had been discontinued. It seems we are not even entitled to constitutionally guaranteed rights to judicial review in the rancid opinion of the anonymous person or persons writing these emails associated with the First Nations Collective.
A fourth email emerged shortly after this, which pretended to be from Chief Aran of the Goringhaicona. The email claimed falsely that Tauriq Jenkins was expelled from the Goringhaicona and also peddled absurb and false claims that I had given the Chief dagga and that the OCA had donated to him a broken-down pick up van. (Don’t ask me why anyone would want to donate a broken-down van and why a malicious and false rumour would be more believable because the van was broken down). The email was confirmed as spurious misinformation by the Goringhaicona Khoi-Khoin Traditional Council afterward.
A history to this tactic:
It is not the first time that opponents of the River Club development have been subject to these kinds of dirty tactics. In March 2020, in the lead-up to a key meeting of the Ministerial Heritage Appeal Tribunal pertaining to the Protection Order issued over the River Club, a number of opponents of the River Club development, including numerous Khoi leaders opposed to the development, were targeted in a series of vituperous and defamatory emails. These emails were all anonymous, purporting to emanate from the A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum. The emails labelled opponents of the development as thieves, fakes, gay dogs, descendants of colonialists, collaborators, perpetrators of institutional violence who will be held to account, fabricators, misfits, inkruipers, conmen, fugitives, fronts, snake oil salesmen, desperados, extortionists, scam artists, frauds, hypocrites, and hijackers.
At that time, the A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum indicated that the email was a fake; the Forum was not the source of the email and would never have sent such defamatory material, confirming that the email was misinformation deliberately sent to smear opponents of the development. The meta-data of the attachments in those 2020 emails gave Mr Rudewaan Arendse’s name as the author. Mr Arendse is the heritage ‘consultant’ employed by the developers of the River Club. This was exposed at the Appeal Tribunal meeting. Mr Arendse subsequently denied he was the author or had anything to do with the defamatory emails but could not provide a plausible explanation why his name was in the metadata associated with all three emails circulated prior to the Tribunal meeting. It is noteworthy that all meta-data have been removed from the attachments recently sent last month along with the email “First Nations Call for Suspension of UCT Prof Leslie London.”
Why were we being targeted in this way on the weekend of the 15th May?
In the same way that the 2020 smears sought to influence key decisions, the timing of the emails in May this year was not coincidental. On the 21st of May, Heritage Western Cape was due to consider the application by the Goringhaicona Indigenous Khoi-Khoin Indigenous Council, the OCA and the Two Rivers Urban Park Association (TRUPA), supported by, amongst others, 12 other Khoi groups, to have the Two Rivers Urban Park (which includes the River Club property) declared a Provincial Heritage Site. Although the meeting was subsequently postponed, it is clear that the supporters of the development were trying to undermine this important process by spreading misinformation before the meeting, similar to what happened in March 2020.
Moreover, Chief Zenzile Khoisan was due to appear in the Magistrate’s Court on the 20th May to answer as to why a restraining order against him should not be made final following threats he made against Tauriq Jenkins in 2020 for his opposition to the River Club. Tauriq Jenkins is the outspoken High Commissioner of the Goringhaicona that has steadfastly opposed the River Club development. Based on the evidence presented, the magistrate confirmed the order. Again, it would seem the fake email pretending to be from Chief Aran, distributed a few days before the magistrate’s court appearance, was meant to disrupt the restraining order process.
We believe this intimidation is happening precisely because our campaign against the River Club has achieved remarkable interest from the press who are increasingly questioning the narrative driven by the developers, a narrative which seeks to present the First Nations Collective as the authoritative voice of the Khoi people and which seeks to portray the handing of custodianship to a select group of Khoi representatives as fulfillment of a right of return for the broader Khoi community. This is not the case. They may be authoritarian but they are not authoritative.
The organisations which have joined together to propose that the TRUP site be graded as a Provincial Heritage Site, include the OCA, many civics and NGOs, but also a range of First Nation groups including the !Aman Traditional Council under Paramount Chief Marthinus, Taaibosch Kei Koranna Royal House under Ka’i Bia Taaibosch, Kai !Korana Transfrontier under Khoebaha Arendse, the Cochoqua Royal Council under Paramount Chief Johannes, the Southern African Khoi and San Kingdom Council, the First Indigenous Nation of South Africa, the Federation of First Peoples of South Africa, A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum, !khoraIIgauIIaes Council, IKhowese Nama Traditional Council, the Western Cape Khoi and San Kingdom Council) and the Goringhaicona Khoi-Khoin Indigenous Council. The right of return exists for the entire gamut of Khoi groups, not just those favoured by the developers. In any event, it is the developers who retain ownership of the land.
Who wrote the emails? A mystery…
The OCA’s response to the malicious emails was to attempt to establish who was responsible for writing and/or disseminating the emails. We wrote to various parties to establish if they were involved in writing and/or disseminating the emails. If they were, we insisted that they apologise, retract the allegations and commit to desist from future defamatory and provocative emails; or if they were not associated, we asked they publicly state as such and distance themselves from the emails.
We wrote to Chief Zenzile Khoisan. He did not reply, nor distance himself from the emails. The attachments to the anonymous smear emails include documents with his name on it and the name of the First Nation Collective.
We wrote to Rudewaan Arendse, the ‘so-called heritage consultant’ for the developer. He did not reply, nor distance himself from the emails. Mr Arendse’s name was all over the metadata of the attachments to the 2020 smear emails. The email attachments in 2021 were scrubbed of metadata. The fact that the metadata were removed is not a coincidence. It is clearly the work of someone who wishes to conceal their electronic fingerprint on the document.
We wrote to Jody Aufrichtig of LLPT. He did not reply, nor distance himself from the emails, despite the fact that we suggested it would be in his best interest to do so. What is puzzling is that in 2020, the LLPT were very quick to distance themselves from the emails associated with their heritage consultant (see the image above) but had nothing to say about defamatory and prima facie illegal emails, with attachments that carried the River Club address, in 2021 (see the letterhead above).
Whereas in 2020, they felt it important to say “we are not in any way involved with any alleged defamatory documents that appear to have been distributed and we distance ourselves from any defamatory statements generally” , in 2021, however, the LLPT said nothing about the smears. To the contrary, the only statement made by LLPT in relation to this matter was in the Sunday Times of the 16th May in the form of a comment that opposition to the development is a form of ‘vicious and vocal nimbyism’ . So rather than take the opportunity to distance themselves from illegal smears, the LLPT chose to join the attack on the OCA. That’s not the behaviour of an organisation that claims to “have always approached this project with maximum transparency.”
The OCA is certainly vocal but our partnerships with Khoi Groups and Civics across the Peninsula are about solidarity and mutual respect – and most importantly, our actions are entirely transparent and legal. The only viciousness in this matter is the viciousness with which supporters of the development are prepared to act against legitimate and broad-based opposition to the development.
Other dirty tricks – attack our funding
Additionally, our funding site, Backabuddy, received a complaint from Chief Zenzile Khoisan, claiming that the site contained misinformation and that only the First Nations Collective can speak for the Khoi. Backabuddy asked us to provide information to rebut the claims, which we did and that confirmed that Chief Zenzile’s claim was false and that there is substantial opposition to the development from a range of First Nation Groups who have supported the application to have TRUP graded as a Provincial Heritage Resources. For example, only a few days ago, Chief Marthinus Martinus Fredericks, paramount chief of the !Aman (Nama) Traditional Council, made it clear that “We will mobilise every single Khoi and San person in the country to stop that development.”
It seems that the supporters of the development can’t tolerate the fact that almost 50 000 people have signed our petition, that there is a strong alliance with Khoi groups outraged at the development and we are steadily raising the funds needed to seek a High Court review. (Please do take the opportunity to support us at the Backabuddy site that the First Nations Collective tried to undermine).
The LLPT claims many times to be committed to transparency. Yet here they have not confirmed or denied being linked to the smears. They have not answered our questions as to whether they funded the production of a 16-page colour edition of First Nation News distributed throughout Observatory. They have not said whether they approve of the fact that lies, misinformation and threats are used to intimidate organisations and individuals seeking legitimate review of a pair of authorisations widely believed to be flawed. This is not an organisation that walks its talk when it says it is transparent about how it has approached this development.
Why is there this attempt to create division?
It is divide-and-rule that has seen powerful elites achieve their goals over centuries, and it has been no different with colonial conquest in South Africa. The same script is evident all over the world where rich and powerful entities encounter local opposition, and it is the script in many parts of South Africa – witness the way external agents associated with wealthy corporations have divided the community at Xolobeni and Mfolozi, with terrible consequences. The Heritage Appeal Tribunal for the Provisional Protection Order over the River Club noted in its final directive in April 2020 the following with regard to the contestations over the River Club development:
The policy of maintaining control over one's subordinates or opponents by encouraging dissent between them, thereby preventing them from uniting in opposition, is evident in this matter. Conservation efforts to preserve the heritage of the Indigenous First Nations' people and communities and protect their cultural rights, have been hamstrung by the 'politics of divide and rule'. In a divided and disparate society that can benefit from and become unified through knowledge of each other's cultures and heritage, the current situation is not a good scenario to be in and this is unfortunate.
We believe that the subjugation of the riverine valley of the Liesbeek to commercial interests, backed by the money of Amazon, the corporation closely linked to the richest man in the world, is a continuation of that colonial process of divide-and-rule. In the words of Alan Boesak, it is the strategy of Jan van Riebeek, Cecil John Rhodes and apartheid leaders to “use our division to overcome us,” to “set us up one against the other”, which would enable them to “more easily fulfil that agenda” of colonial divide and rule. At a Freedom Walk on 27th April 2021, he appealed for unity in opposition to the River Club, rather than “fruitless competition amongst each other for some funds and little bit of pennies here and there” which were “bestowed” on some groups by “the new colonialists and the new imperialists of our day.”
The OCA will continue to oppose the development and support efforts by First Nation groups who believe the development will destroy, not honour, Khoi history. We, and our partners, will not be stopped by dirty tactics.
The question to ask of Amazon is whether Amazon really wants to be associated with a development achieved through such dirty means.
We are almost at 50 000 supporters on our Website.
One of our supporters said the following in a comment when signing the peitition: “I am a DIRECT DESCENDANT of the first people of South Africa and I have had ENOUGH of the violations against our people, our sacred spaces and history. ENOUGH!”
She has spoken the truth to power.