Excerpt: Liberty Fighters Network (LFN) is placing the DA under growing public scrutiny as the battle over the Cape Peninsula baboons returns to the Western Cape High Court tomorrow Friday, 28 August 2026 at 10h00. But this fight has become about far more than baboons: at its heart lies the still-vacant constitutional Office of the Commissioner for the Environment — an independent watchdog intended to protect the environmental interests of everyone in the Western Cape. With LFN calling for restraint before irreversible measures overtake the litigation, the question is now whether the DA will act, or leave the controversy to the very structures whose conduct is being challenged.

Read the communication with the DA Leadership at the bottom of this article. Please also comment.

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Tomorrow the Western Cape High Court will hear a battle that began with Cape Peninsula baboons — but has grown into something much bigger: who watches government when environmental decisions affect all of us?

Tomorrow morning, Friday, 28 August 2026 at 10h00, Liberty Fighters Network (“LFN”) returns to the Western Cape High Court in Cape Town in one of the most extraordinary stages yet of its ongoing legal battle concerning the Cape Peninsula baboons.

The hearing will take place in open court, and members of the public are invited to attend.

But if you believe this case is only about baboons, you may be missing its most important consequence.

Yes, it is about wild baboons facing capture, removal, confinement, reproductive intervention and potentially other irreversible measures.

Yes, it concerns the controversial Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Action Plan.

Yes, it concerns whether government should be allowed to continue implementing irreversible measures while important litigation remains unfinished.

But underneath all of that lies a much bigger constitutional question:

What happened to the independent Commissioner for the Environment which the Western Cape Constitution created for all of us?

And why, when a dispute such as the baboon crisis demonstrates exactly why independent environmental oversight may be necessary, is that constitutional office still vacant?

That is where tomorrow’s court battle becomes everybody’s business.

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THE CLOCK IS NOW PART OF THE CASE

LFN instituted urgent proceedings in February 2026 under Western Cape High Court case number 2026-024184.

Part “A” sought interim protection intended to preserve the status quo while the wider constitutional and administrative disputes in Part “B” could ultimately be determined.

Among the measures LFN sought temporarily to restrain were the capture, removal, relocation or confinement of baboon troops; vasectomies or other reproductive interventions; euthanasia or lethal control; sanctuary arrangements; and infrastructure facilitating permanent confinement.

The application was heard by Holderness J on 19 February 2026 and dismissed on 25 February 2026.

LFN filed an Application for Leave to Appeal against the whole judgment and order on 2 March 2026.

That application remains unheard.

More than five months have passed.

And while lawyers, litigants and the judicial machinery have moved through pleadings, correspondence, costs disputes, court administration and further interlocutory proceedings, the outside world has not stood still.

The City has reportedly secured an operating budget for a proposed baboon sanctuary. Planning associated with an enclosure has progressed. The Cape of Good Hope SPCA has publicly maintained that it does not support the placement of free-roaming, wild-caught baboons into a sanctuary as a long-term management solution.

The dispute is therefore very much alive.

But the animals cannot file affidavits.

They cannot request postponements.

They cannot seek leave to appeal.

And they cannot recover something biologically or physically irreversible merely because a court may later decide that another course ought to have been followed.

That is the cruel mathematics of this case:

Government can recover lost administrative time. A baboon cannot recover a biological function that has permanently been removed.

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TOMORROW: THE JUDGE IS NOW ALSO THE SUBJECT OF THE APPLICATION

The dispute has become even more unusual.

LFN has brought an urgent application seeking the recusal of Holderness J from the further conduct of the proceedings.

LFN contends, amongst other things, that the cumulative history of the matter has created a reasonable apprehension concerning whether the remaining proceedings can continue before the same judicial officer with the required appearance of impartiality.

The respondents, the DA-led City of Cape Town, CapeNature (falling under the DA-led Western Cape), and SANParks (reporting to a DA-occupied Minister), opposing that application, reject LFN’s case and contend that there is no proper basis for recusal.

Holderness J has directed that the recusal application will be heard tomorrow, 28 August 2026, together with the outstanding question of costs arising from Part “A”.

LFN has placed on record that, logically and legally, the recusal question must be determined first: if a judge is to be recused, that judge cannot thereafter proceed to determine the costs issue from which the recusal would remove her.

Whatever one’s view of the competing legal arguments, tomorrow’s hearing is therefore no routine procedural appearance.

It asks a fundamental question concerning the administration of justice itself:

Who should continue deciding this case?

And behind that question another clock continues ticking — the clock governing what happens to the baboons while litigation continues.

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THEN LFN WENT TO THE DA

With the litigation continuing and the danger of a fait accompli (literally meaning “accomplished fact”) increasing, LFN took an unusual additional step this week. (See the series of communication underneath this article.)

On 25 August 2026, LFN addressed an extensive open letter to senior Democratic Alliance political, executive and legislative leadership.

The request was carefully limited.

LFN did not ask the DA to overturn the High Court.

It did not ask politicians to dictate what Holderness J must decide.

It did not ask anyone to interfere with judicial independence.

It did not ask the City, CapeNature or SANParks to concede the litigation.

It did not even demand that the proposed sanctuary be permanently abandoned.

The immediate request was much simpler:

Pause the irreversible measures.

Preserve the status quo as far as reasonably possible.

Let the Courts finish deciding the disputes before the subject matter of those disputes is permanently changed.

That distinction is crucial.

A government possessing a lawful power to do something is not necessarily under a legal obligation to do it today.

A project can be paused without being abandoned.

A budget can remain available.

Planning can continue.

Discussions can continue.

Litigation can continue.

But death cannot be paused after it occurs.

Sterilisation cannot simply be reversed by a later court order.

And a wild troop subjected to prolonged capture and confinement cannot necessarily be returned months later to precisely the same biological, behavioural and ecological position it occupied before.

LFN therefore asked political and executive leadership to exercise restraint outside the courtroom, not influence what happens inside it.

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THE DA SAID NO — OR DID IT?

On 26 August 2026, Kenneth Wynne, Deputy Chief of Staff in the DA Federal Leader’s Office, responded.

The DA advised that LFN’s correspondence had been referred to the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (“JTT”), which it described as the appropriate structure dealing with implementation of the Baboon Management Action Plan.

The response further stated that the DA’s political leadership could not serve as an “alternative avenue of appeal or review” concerning matters already before the Courts, and that it would not be appropriate for political leadership to override decisions of competent authorities or intervene in a manner cutting across judicial proceedings.

That would be a perfectly respectable answer —

if that were what LFN had asked the DA to do.

It was not.

LFN therefore responded again on 26 August 2026, pointing directly to what it regards as the misunderstanding at the centre of the DA’s answer.

The question was never:

“Will the DA overturn the Court?”

The question was:

“Will those holding political, executive and legislative power use whatever lawful powers and influence they possess to help prevent irreversible action while the Courts are still deciding the dispute?”

Those are two very different propositions.

LFN also questioned why its request had effectively been referred back to the very Joint Task Team whose implementation of the disputed Action Plan forms part of the underlying controversy.

You do not answer a request for independent political consideration merely by forwarding it back to the implementing structure whose conduct gave rise to the request.

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AND THAT IS WHERE THE STANDOFF NOW EXISTS

LFN has asked the DA to reconsider its response.

It has asked for an unequivocal answer.

If the DA will facilitate temporary restraint, say yes.

If it will not, say no.

But let the public know.

LFN’s response puts the issue starkly: the DA is entitled to make a political decision that it will not seek or facilitate a temporary standstill.

But the public is equally entitled to know that the decision was made after the risk of irreversible consequences had expressly been brought to the attention of its leadership.

LFN requested a substantive response by 12h00 today, 27 August 2026.

At the centre of that request sits another issue which the DA’s first response did not address at all.

And this is where the story becomes much larger than the baboons.

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THE WATCHDOG THAT NEVER ARRIVED

The Constitution of the Western Cape, 1997 created something remarkable when it was enacted 28-years ago.

In sections 71 to 77, it provides for an Office of the Commissioner for the Environment.

This was not invented by LFN.

It is not some new office dreamed up because of the present baboon dispute.

It forms part of the Province’s own constitutional architecture.

The contemplated Commissioner is an independent environmental oversight institution, with functions relating to monitoring environmental matters, investigating complaints concerning environmental administration, and making recommendations to provincial organs of state and municipalities.

Think about what that means.

When ordinary people are caught between government departments…

When different authorities point at one another…

When scientific experts disagree…

When environmental decisions involve major expenditure…

When municipalities, provincial entities and national institutions become involved simultaneously…

When citizens believe that environmental administration requires scrutiny…

there was supposed to be an independent constitutional institution capable of standing outside that machinery.

The Commissioner for the Environment.

Yet the office remains vacant and, according to LFN’s case, has never been properly operationalised.

And instead of first giving that constitutional institution life and allowing the public to discover whether it works, the DA-led Western Cape Government has pursued constitutional amendment legislation aimed at removing the provisions creating the Commissioner.

That presents an extraordinary sequence:

The Constitution creates a watchdog.

The watchdog is never properly put to work.

Then government moves towards removing the watchdog.

And now we find ourselves embroiled in a major environmental dispute involving the City of Cape Town, CapeNature, SANParks, the JTT, animal welfare concerns, competing management proposals, public money, public controversy and litigation.

It is difficult to imagine a better moment to ask:

WHERE IS THE COMMISSIONER?

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THIS IS WHY THE COMMISSIONER IS FOR ALL OF US

Tomorrow’s case should concern you even if you have never seen a baboon.

Because constitutional institutions are not created only for today’s controversy.

Perhaps tomorrow your community faces a landfill.

A mining project.

Water contamination.

Coastal development.

Pollution.

Destruction of wetlands.

A disputed environmental authorisation.

Development affecting a protected ecosystem.

An environmental decision involving your municipality and provincial government simultaneously.

You may discover that fighting one government institution is difficult.

Fighting several simultaneously is considerably harder.

And doing so without money for teams of attorneys, advocates and experts can become nearly impossible.

That is precisely why independent institutions matter.

An environmental watchdog does not belong to the government of the day.

It does not belong to the opposition.

It does not belong to LFN.

It belongs to the constitutional system created for the people.

That is why LFN’s position concerning the Commissioner transcends party politics.

If an institution created in a constitution can simply remain dormant year after year until government eventually decides it would rather remove it, an uncomfortable question follows:

What does a constitutional promise actually mean?

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BABOONS MAY BE THE MESSENGERS

There is an irony in all of this.

The Cape Peninsula baboons may ultimately have done something no politician, lawyer or constitutional academic managed to do for decades:

They have forced attention onto a forgotten constitutional office.

These animals cannot read the Western Cape Constitution.

They know nothing about section 71.

They have never heard of judicial review, locus standi, interlocutory applications, recusal, section 165 or constitutional amendment.

They simply know the mountains, valleys and coastline their troops have occupied.

Yet their struggle may force human beings to answer a much bigger question about our own system of government.

Who watches the environmental decision-makers?

Perhaps that is why this case matters so much.

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COME TO COURT TOMORROW

This case now belongs in the public eye.

LFN therefore invites supporters, residents, environmental activists, animal-welfare advocates, constitutionalists, journalists and ordinary members of the public to attend tomorrow’s proceedings.

📅 Friday, 28 August 2026

🕙 10h00

⚖️ Western Cape High Court, Cape Town

📂 Case No. 2026-024184

The hearing has expressly been directed to take place in open court.

Those attending should arrive early and check the court roll or enquire at the Court for the courtroom allocated to the matter.

Come peacefully.

Come respectfully.

Come to observe.

Come because open courts belong to the public.

Come because judicial accountability does not mean intimidating judges — it means citizens taking an interest in the institutions exercising enormous power in their name.

And come because tomorrow’s proceedings may influence what happens next not only to the baboons, but to litigation aimed at breathing life into an environmental safeguard written into the Western Cape’s own Constitution.

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THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC IS SIMPLE

LFN does not ask anybody to decide the court case in the street.

We ask people to pay attention.

We ask government to allow the judicial process a meaningful opportunity to work before irreversible steps overtake it.

And we ask why an environmental watchdog written into the Western Cape Constitution remains absent when controversy surrounding the environment is crying out for independent scrutiny.

Tomorrow, lawyers and litigants will argue about recusal, costs, procedure and legal principle.

Outside the courtroom, however, a far simpler question remains:

If government can wait, but irreversible consequences cannot be undone, why not wait?

And beyond even that lies the constitutional question that may ultimately matter for generations:

If the people were promised an independent Commissioner for the Environment, why have they never had one?

The baboons cannot ask that question.

We can.

And tomorrow, we will.

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✊ HOW YOU CAN HELP

Share this article widely today.

Tell people about tomorrow’s hearing.

Invite the media.

Attend the Court if you are able.

Speak about the Commissioner for the Environment — because the public cannot defend an institution it does not even know exists.

And if you believe that ordinary people should be able to challenge powerful institutions without needing millions of rands behind them, please consider supporting the work of Liberty Fighters Network through our donation page at libertyfighters.org.

LFN renders its public-interest assistance without charging those whom it assists. Court cases, printing, travel, filing, research and the everyday work required to confront institutional power nevertheless cost money.

Your support helps us continue.

This fight began with the baboons.

It may end up protecting something much bigger for everyone.

Liberation Greetings

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