We start with an appeal for funding. It is the shortage of funding that has left us vulnerable to a sustained and vicious attack, in court and out of court, on our campaign. Please support us at our fundraising site. Any donation of any size will make a huge difference

Here we explain why the attacks have been so debilitating of our financial base and undermined our campaign.

Four months ago, we were facing a situation where the developers had re-started construction at the site, in prima facie contempt of Judge Goliath’s interdict to halt the construction at the River Club pending the findings of the review of the decisions to authorise the River Club development.

When we tried to bring contempt of court proceedings against the developers in July, we were subject to harassment both in the court and outside the court to delay the contempt matter. It was delayed long enough for an unknown grouping claiming to represent the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council (GKKITC) to appear, well-funded (from where, one wonders?) and represented in court by a leading silk, to dispute the authenticity of the mandate of High Commissioner Tauriq Jenkins.

Three irregular legal interventions appeared in rapid succession. The failure of the Judge President to allocate a judge to hear the contempt matter compounded our difficulties such that we had to seek a further interdict, which was then turned down for lack of urgency. All of these matters severely depleted whatever funding we had raised. As a result, we lost our lawyers in mid-process, could not find legal counsel to represent us at short notice, and so when the matters were heard in court last month, Tauriq Jenkins was unrepresented; moreover, his affidavit, which provided detailed evidence to rebut the accusations, was not accepted in court because it was late.

As a result, the court made findings that were disastrous for our case. The court found in favour of the gerrymandered mystery group claiming to be the authentic representatives of the GKKITC, labelled Tauriq Jenkins a fraud and upheld the developers and their supporter’ appeal – even awarding costs against us. The disaster was the result of us being outlawfared because we lacked funds to mount a decent response. You can read a dissection of why the only fraud was the fraud against High Commissioner Tauriq Jenkins. You are also welcome to view recordings of a press conference at which Khoi leaders have spoken out against the judgement and resolved to continue opposing the development and in support of High Commissioner Tauriq Jenkins. Two IOL articles in the Cape Times and Weekend Argus provide a different perspective to that presented in the other press and highlight Alan Boesak’s call for a TRC to address the dispossession and oppression of the Khoi and San, which should be located on the site.

Our first step is to appeal the cost order against us which we believe was not appropriate. And then approach the review.

Even though we have lost the interim interdict, we have a strong case for the review based on clear evidence that (a) the consultation process was flawed – in fact, consent was manufactured; (b) the decision-makers ignored key information and took account of spurious information both in relation to heritage matters and in relation to environmental sustainability; (c) the decisions were pre-planned with lip service to objections. It is because the review case is strong we have been subjected to most extreme forms of harassment (besides the character assassination of Tauriq, our Civic has been targeted by an anonymous website circulating false information in order to induce people to join the civic to take us out of the court case).

The main reason why we are in this situation is the lack of funding to properly prosecute our case. The developer has now attacked our funding source by complaining to a fundraising platform, imputing falsely that the whole case is fraudulent which was not the finding of the High Court. But it is economic warfare against us.

This is a sad example of a script found all across the world. When rich corporates encounter strong community opposition, what then happens is that communities are divided, counter-groups mysteriously appear in order to create divisions, legal processes get deployed to benefit selected parties and community groups, who lack lavish budgets to respond, are subjected to intense public propaganda. It’s a deeply unbalanced playing field.

Nevertheless, your support thus far has been hugely valuable to us and we appreciate it deeply. Please continue supporting us as our case will be shown to be correct and just.

Visit our website and follow the Liesbeek Action Campaign on twitter: @LiesbeekAction. 

Make the Liesbeek Matter!