A Liberty Fighters Network report on the Cape Peninsula baboon litigation, constitutional accountability, judicial conduct, political responsibility and the cost of independent public-interest litigation.

Excerpt: What began as a fight to protect Cape Peninsula baboons has exposed something far bigger: a constitutional environmental watchdog left vacant for decades, DA-led government structures pressing ahead with irreversible measures, a court case trapped in procedural battles, allegations of ‘litigant profiling’, punitive costs, and judicial conduct now before the JSC. The baboons did not create these problems — they merely led LFN far enough into the system to expose them.

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There are moments when an apparently small dispute becomes a window into something much bigger.

For Liberty Fighters Network, that moment came through a troop of baboons.

What began as an urgent attempt to prevent potentially irreversible measures being imposed upon Cape Peninsula baboons has developed into something far larger: a constitutional fight over an environmental watchdog that has never properly functioned; questions about who actually makes environmental decisions; months of procedural delay; punitive costs proceedings; applications for recusal and leave to appeal; complaints to the Judicial Service Commission; a confrontation over the treatment of self-represented litigants; political silence; and, finally, the extraordinary spectacle of members of the public being threatened with contempt proceedings after applauding when somebody reminded a courtroom that the baboons themselves could not stand there and argue for their freedom.

And through all of this, the baboons have continued moving closer to permanent confinement.

That is the story I believe South Africans need to know.

It is also the story some of our own supporters should read before casually asking what LFN is doing, whether we have somehow been ‘compromised’, why we are not simultaneously litigating every data centre, every proposed Digital ID system, every banking abuse, every government decision and every other threat they see developing around them.

The answer is simple.

We are already fighting structures, not symptoms.

And we are doing so with resources that have now been stretched to breaking point.

This case was never merely about baboons

On 19 February 2026, LFN and I appeared in the Western Cape High Court in urgent proceedings under case number 2026-024184.

The relief was deliberately preventative. We sought to preserve the position before allegedly permanent or irreversible measures could be implemented: capture, removal, relocation and confinement of troops; reproductive interventions; euthanasia or lethal control; sanctuary arrangements; and infrastructure associated with confinement.

But behind those baboons stood a constitutional problem that has existed for decades.

Sections 71 to 77 of the Constitution of the Western Cape, 1997 created the Office of the Commissioner for the Environment. Yet, since the commencement of those provisions, no Commissioner has ever been appointed and the constitutional office has remained non-operational. Our amended case seeks structural relief directed at completing the constitutional appointment process, including the role of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament and, ultimately, Premier Alan Winde. Our proposed case expressly identifies the continuing failure, since 1998, to establish, appoint and operationalise that constitutional office.

That point matters enormously.

Whatever political administration originally inherited this constitutional failure, the present Democratic Alliance (DA)-led institutions cannot indefinitely treat it as somebody else’s problem. The Western Cape Provincial Parliament, in which the DA presently holds a 55.3% majority, and a DA Premier occupy the constitutional positions through which the appointment process must ultimately be completed.

Instead, the position has become even more extraordinary. After years during which no Commissioner was appointed, the DA became the political driving force behind proposals to remove the constitutional provisions creating the Commissioner altogether. In other words, rather than finally operationalising an environmental watchdog which the Western Cape Constitution has demanded for decades, the proposed solution is now to delete that watchdog from the Constitution.

That is not some historical constitutional curiosity. It has immediate consequences. While the Commissioner remains absent — and while the very constitutional provisions creating the office face proposed repeal — governmental authorities continue taking environmental decisions capable of producing permanent and far-reaching consequences.

The implications extend well beyond baboons. Consider, for example, the rapid emergence of controversial large-scale data-centre developments in the Western Cape and elsewhere in South Africa. Concerns have already arisen publicly about their enormous demands upon electricity, water, land and supporting infrastructure, as well as the environmental authorisation and planning processes governing them. Questions also arise as to whether governmental efforts to remove regulatory “red tape” and accelerate investment approvals may weaken, circumvent or compress safeguards intended to protect the environment and affected communities.

That is precisely when an independent Commissioner for the Environment should matter most.

The baboon case therefore raises a question extending far beyond baboons: why has a constitutional environmental watchdog remained vacant for nearly three decades, why is the political answer by the DA now to remove it from the Western Cape Constitution, and who independently scrutinises major environmental decisions in its absence?

Today it is the baboons. Tomorrow it may be a data centre, a major development, water allocation, energy infrastructure, mining, industrial expansion or another project whose environmental consequences cannot simply be reversed once the bulldozers arrive.

This is why LFN regards the appointment of the Commissioner not as a side issue, but as one of the potentially most important structural outcomes of any litigation currently in our courts.

Our case also attacks the legal foundation of the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team itself. The arrangement derives from a Memorandum of Agreement concluded on 6 July 2023 between SANParks, CapeNature and the City of Cape Town. The Action Plan followed, with implementation measures including population control and relocation.

Our question has always been basic: who lawfully decided what, under which power, upon what record, and subject to what independent constitutional oversight?

Those are not vexatious questions.

Those are constitutional questions.

Then the judgment changed the battlefield

Holderness J delivered judgment on 25 February 2026.

The judgment did not simply say LFN had failed to satisfy the requirements for urgent interim relief. It opened with the words, ‘Litigation is not a game’, described me as LFN’s ‘alter ego’, referred to the courts as a ‘playground’, and relied upon previous litigation history in characterising us.

LFN has increasingly come to question whether this has become a litigation tactic of its own: where opposing parties face a difficult factual case, instead of answering that case on its own merits, previous adverse judgments from unrelated litigation are introduced to construct a narrative about the litigant rather than to determine the dispute. We call this ‘litigant profiling’ — It is the legal equivalent of attacking the messenger when answering the message becomes inconvenient.

Our subsequent JSC complaint records our contention that the cumulative effect portrayed LFN and me as abusive, serial and vexatious litigants, and that unrelated litigation was being used as a lens through which the present case was viewed.

We dispute those findings and characterisations.

That distinction is important. LFN has not been declared a vexatious litigant through some general prohibition against litigation. What has happened is that language portraying us as abusive or serial litigants has increasingly followed us from case to case, and respondents have repeatedly attempted to turn previous criticism into a form of litigation character reference.

That is precisely why we describe the phenomenon as litigant profiling.

If an organisation repeatedly challenges government, banks, regulators and powerful institutions, it will obviously repeatedly appear in court. Government departments, municipalities, banks and large law firms are themselves repeat litigants. Frequency of litigation cannot logically become evidence of abuse only when the recurrent litigant is the one challenging power.

More troubling is that this ‘litigant profiling’ can become self-perpetuating. Adverse findings from earlier cases are repeatedly relied upon to construct a profile of LFN and me, while our counterarguments concerning those very findings have, in material respects, not been addressed in the resulting judgments. In the present case, for example, Holderness J herself requested further counter-submissions from us to be delivered after the hearing, yet material submissions addressing issues subsequently relied upon against us were not dealt with in her judgment of 25 February 2026. The danger is obvious: yesterday’s adverse characterisation becomes today’s evidence of a ‘pattern’, which may then become tomorrow’s adverse characterisation.

We appealed. Then time started becoming the real judge

On 2 March 2026, only days after judgment, we filed an Application for Leave to Appeal against the whole judgment and order.

What followed should concern anyone who believes an appellate remedy must remain practically effective, especially when the case itself being appealed was lodged as urgent.

On 1 June 2026, we were advised from Holderness J’s chambers that the application for leave to appeal would only be heard from the week commencing 27 July 2026 because the outstanding costs issue was to be decided first.

On 9 June 2026, we were then informed that there was ‘little purpose’ in further correspondence and that the costs judgment would be delivered by the end of the following week in chambers (without a hearing as per the court order).

It was not.

By mid-July, neither that promised costs determination nor the appeal hearing had materialised. The week commencing 27 July also came and went without the leave-to-appeal application being heard. By 13 August 2026, more than five months had passed since our appeal application had been lodged.

Five months may sound ordinary in South African litigation.

But this was an urgent case about potentially irreversible conduct involving living animals.

Every week mattered.

Every month changed the factual position outside court.

Eventually time itself threatened to decide the dispute without any appellate court ever reaching it.

So we went to the judicial leadership

On 17 July 2026, we sought urgent administrative case-management intervention from Goliath DJP. We expressly said that we were not asking her to interfere with the merits. We wanted a judicial process capable of reaching the dispute before implementation made that process meaningless.

When Goliath DJP was unavailable, the request was referred to the Office of the Judge President.

On 29 July 2026, that office expressly advised that it would revert after receiving and considering the court file. Despite our view that a litigant should not be responsible for moving a court’s own electronic file between judicial offices, we nevertheless prepared and physically delivered a consolidated hardcopy bundle.

A substantive response did not follow.

We consequently lodged a complaint against Mabindla-Boqwana JP, which the JSC acknowledged on 14 August 2026 under reference JSC/95/08/2026.

That complaint does not ask the JSC to decide our baboon case.

It asks whether the administrative responsibilities of a Head of Court were properly discharged when an urgent appellate process was visibly drifting towards practical irrelevance.

There is a significant difference.

Meanwhile the lawyers fought about who we are instead of only what our case says

Fairbridges, acting for the City and CapeNature, wrote directly to the Judge President on 21 July 2026 opposing our case-management position and supporting a costs-first approach. SANParks’ attorneys followed with their own position on 28 July 2026, contending that recusal had to be brought formally and that costs should precede the leave-to-appeal proceedings.

That became the pattern we have increasingly encountered: standing; authority; representation; prior litigation; alleged abuse; costs; sequencing; recusal; procedural competence.

Some of those are legitimate issues for lawyers to raise. That is what litigation is.

But there comes a point where the public is entitled to ask whether a succession of threshold disputes has the practical result of keeping the underlying constitutional merits permanently one hearing away.

In another filing to the Chief Justice, we deliberately declined to misuse the expression ‘Stalingrad defence’ against Fairbridges Attorneys representing the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape’s, CapeNature. Our point was narrower: irrespective of subjective motive, repeated threshold and sequencing disputes can produce procedural attrition, where the merits and appellate remedies are deferred until events outside the courtroom have overtaken them.

That is the concern.

Not conspiracy theory.

Not fantasy.

A documented procedural outcome.

And where the City’s Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, the DA-Leader, employs lawyers at taxpayers’ expense to advance a litigation strategy relying heavily upon standing, authority, alleged abuse and punitive costs, the public is entitled to ask who authorised that strategy and what instructions were given.

I will not manufacture an answer where the instruction trail has not yet been disclosed.

But neither will LFN pretend that the question is irrelevant.

Then came 28 August 2026

By August, SANParks, had expressly said that it, the City and CapeNature wanted punitive costs against me personally.

We had meanwhile brought a formal recusal application against Holderness J who remained seized with adjudicating the live issues before court, as SANParks itself had said was the procedure required.

On 28 August 2026, we entered court for what became one of the most extraordinary hearings I have personally experienced.

During my submissions, I attempted to explain why the costs-first process and continued delay of the appeal could not be separated from what was happening to the baboons outside court.

I was cut off.

I protested that I wanted to finish the argument.

And eventually I said what, in my view, had been missing from the entire procedural battle:

the poor baboons could not be in court to fight their own case.

Members of the public sitting inside the court room responded, ‘Hear, hear’, and applauded.

Twice.

Holderness J warned that if there was another disturbance they would all have to leave. When a member of the public then stated that they had come because of the baboons and openly alleged bias, Holderness J instructed that their names and contact details be obtained ‘for contempt proceedings’.

Think about the picture for a moment.

A constitutional environmental dispute.

Wild animals facing capture and confinement.

A public-interest organisation with no paid professional legal team.

Members of the public sitting in court because they are concerned about those animals.

And a courtroom rapidly becoming consumed by questions about my conduct, our litigation history, costs, recusal, courtroom etiquette and whether members of the public might face contempt proceedings.

That hearing resulted in ex tempore judgments on recusal and costs.

It also resulted in something else.

A much larger judicial-conduct record.

‘Bullying’, ‘Stalingrad’ and another JSC supplement

The events of 28 August 2026 did not end when we left the courtroom.

Our subsequent supplementary JSC complaint records, among other matters, the ‘bullying stratagem’ exchange, the use of the expression ‘serial litigant’, the interruption and curtailment of submissions, the treatment of my ordinary Afrikaans response ‘Ja’, the use of the pending JSC complaint during the hearing, the denial we allege occurred in relation to a proper right of reply during the costs hearing, and the language eventually employed in the recusal judgment.

The supplement records expressions including ‘blatant stratagem’, ‘sustained exercise in delay’ and the hallmarks of a ‘Stalingrad defence’.

On 9 September 2026, that supplementary complaint against Holderness J was finalised with a substantial annexure bundle containing the proceedings, the ex tempore recusal and costs judgments, protective Applications for Leave to Appeal and the subsequent case-management record.

The supplement specifically asks the JSC to examine the official audio, compare the judicial interventions during my submissions with those made during counsel’s submissions, investigate the ‘bullying’, ‘blatant stratagem’, ‘sustained exercise in delay’ and ‘Stalingrad defence’ characterisations, and determine whether the comparative treatment complied with the Judicial Code of Conduct.

Those are complaints presently requiring determination. They are not findings of misconduct, and LFN will not pretend otherwise.

That is how accountability should work.

We make the allegation.

We produce the record.

The institution must investigate it.

Holderness J was not the only judicial officer we reported

During this same period, LFN also pursued a JSC complaint relating to Le Grange J arising from separate litigation involving the DA’s challenge to the Expropriation Act, while the complaint against Mabindla-Boqwana JP arose directly from the administrative handling of this baboon litigation.

The Le Grange J judgment had been a major victory for DA Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Dean Macpherson, against LFN. It contained severe findings against LFN and me, including punitive personal costs and findings portraying our litigation as abusive and without merit. Macpherson did not quietly accept that victory. He publicly celebrated it through an official government media release which repeated the judgment’s adverse findings and presented the outcome as a victory against LFN’s supposedly vexatious and abusive public-interest litigation.

But the story did not end there.

A later process before Goliath DJP recorded that the Court was functus officio and that no costs order was granted against LFN and me as amici. LFN accordingly disputes the continuing validity and use of the earlier adverse character findings. Yet the Le Grange J judgment subsequently travelled into the baboon litigation, where it was relied upon against us before Holderness J as part of the broader narrative concerning our litigation conduct.

That connection is impossible for LFN to ignore. In the first matter, the beneficiary of the adverse judgment was a DA Cabinet Minister who publicly celebrated LFN’s supposed litigation abuse. In the baboon case, the governmental parties opposing us include the DA-governed City of Cape Town, CapeNature under the DA-governed Western Cape, and SANParks, falling under the national environmental portfolio presently headed by a DA Minister. Those respondents then relied upon the earlier adverse litigation history against us.

Why does that matter?

Because judgments travel. Labels travel. And political narratives travel with them.

One judicial characterisation becomes a government media release celebrating LFN’s supposed abuse. The judgment then becomes an annexure in another case, an argument before another judge, part of an alleged pattern, and ultimately another basis upon which punitive costs and adverse character findings are sought against the same public-interest organisation.

That does not prove collusion, and LFN does not allege that it does.

It demonstrates something more readily provable and equally concerning: how an adverse judicial label, once obtained and publicly amplified by a political office-bearer, can acquire a life of its own and be carried across completely unrelated litigation against the same organisation.

If those character findings are justified, they must withstand scrutiny.

If they are not, they can poison a public-interest organisation across unrelated litigation for years.

That is precisely why LFN will challenge them.

Then the SPCA drew a line of its own

The Cape of Good Hope SPCA is not LFN.

It is not a party to our High Court litigation.

It has its own statutory mandate.

But its position on the proposed sanctuary became highly significant.

The SPCA publicly confirmed that it does not support the placement of free-roaming, wild-caught baboons into a sanctuary as a long-term management solution.

After Judith Sole and I met with the SPCA on 4 September 2026, the matter was formally placed before it.

Then, on 6 September 2026, the SPCA confirmed in writing that it does not support the permanent confinement of healthy, free-ranging baboons in a sanctuary environment; that this position had been communicated to the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (CPBMJTT); and that the SPCA’s welfare monitoring must not be construed as endorsement or approval of the relocation.

That does not prove LFN’s entire legal case.

It does something just as important politically and publicly.

It destroys the convenient fiction that opposition to permanent sanctuary confinement is merely the obsession of LFN.

It is not.

And where was the Democratic Alliance?

On 25 August 2026, before the 28 August hearing, LFN sent a comprehensive and extremely urgent open letter to senior DA leadership.

We did not ask politicians to tell a judge what to decide.

We expressly rejected that.

We asked for something far simpler: use the lawful political and executive power you already possess to pause irreversible implementation until the judicial process can function effectively.

The request was directed to those occupying positions across the relevant governmental structure.

The City of Cape Town is DA-governed.

The Western Cape Government is DA-governed.

CapeNature falls within the provincial environmental governance structure.

At national level, the environmental portfolio under which SANParks falls is presently headed by a DA representative in the Government of National Unity. LFN expressly acknowledged that party affiliation does not give the DA power unlawfully to dictate every operational decision. Our point was that the party nevertheless has substantial lawful political and executive influence across the governmental spheres involved.

We asked for a temporary moratorium.

We asked Mayor Hill-Lewis to convene the relevant City and DA leadership.

We asked Premier Winde to convene the relevant provincial executive.

We asked WC Minister Bredell to exercise the lawful oversight available within his portfolio.

We asked for engagement with SANParks.

We asked for clarification of the DA’s position regarding the proposed repeal of the constitutional provisions creating the Commissioner for the Environment.

And we asked for a meeting before irreversible action overtook the court case.

The political response did not answer that central request.

Instead, the matter was referred back towards the JTT – the very implementing structure whose legal foundation is itself part of the litigation. Our response on 26 August made the distinction plain: pending litigation does not force government to proceed immediately. A lawful power to proceed is not a legal command to proceed, and referral back to the disputed implementing structure does not answer a request directed at political and executive office-bearers.

The DA leadership was therefore placed squarely on notice.

What happened thereafter is part of its public record.

That is not intimidation.

That is democratic accountability.

The baboons have therefore exposed something much bigger than baboon management

They have exposed a constitutional environmental office that has remained vacant for decades while the DA, despite its prolonged control of the Western Cape’s political institutions, failed to secure the appointment of a Commissioner and has instead become the political driving force behind proposals to remove that office from the Western Cape Constitution altogether.

They have exposed an uncomfortable political contradiction: the same DA that repeatedly condemns the ANC nationally for institutional failure, lack of accountability and disregard for constitutional obligations must now answer for what has happened under its own prolonged governance of the Western Cape. Constitutionalism cannot mean one thing when scrutinising the ANC and another when the spotlight turns blue.

They have exposed how difficult it can be for ordinary people to identify and challenge the actual administrative decisions behind government implementation — particularly where the City of Cape Town, CapeNature and SANParks operate collectively through a Joint Task Team, while fundamental questions remain about which individual statutory authority actually took which legally reviewable decision, under what power and upon what record.

They have exposed how time itself can become the effective decision-maker: an urgent application is brought to prevent allegedly irreversible conduct; leave to appeal is filed within days; months pass without that appeal being heard; and meanwhile the very conduct sought to be restrained continues outside the courtroom. By the time justice eventually arrives, the baboons may already have lost what the litigation was instituted to protect.

They have exposed what can happen when a self-represented public-interest organisation enters court against government respondents represented by teams of attorneys and counsel: increasingly, the battle can shift away from whether the governmental conduct being challenged is lawful towards standing, representation, authority, previous litigation, alleged vexatiousness, punitive costs and ultimately the character of those who dared to bring the challenge at all.

They have exposed how ‘litigant profiling’ can travel from one unrelated case into another — and how an adverse judicial characterisation can become a government media release, then an annexure, then an argument before another judge, then evidence of an alleged ‘pattern’, and finally another basis upon which punitive costs and adverse character findings are sought.

They have exposed why judicial accountability cannot simply end whenever the words ‘judicial independence’ are invoked. Judicial independence protects judges from improper interference in their adjudicative functions. It does not place judicial conduct beyond constitutional accountability, nor does it deprive a litigant of the right to approach the Judicial Service Commission where that litigant genuinely believes the line has been crossed.

And perhaps most importantly, the baboons have exposed a political establishment that cannot now say it did not know.

The DA leadership was formally placed on notice. It was asked not to interfere with the courts, but simply to use whatever lawful political and executive influence was available to preserve the status quo while the courts determined the dispute. Other political parties were approached; all ignored our plea, except the Cape Independence Party (CapExit). The SPCA publicly stated its opposition to permanent confinement of healthy, free-ranging baboons. The litigation remained unresolved. The warnings continued.

Yet implementation continued.

That is why this story stopped being merely about baboons a long time ago.

It is now about what happens when ordinary people challenge governmental power; what happens when constitutional institutions are left dormant; what happens when political accountability is demanded from the party that presents itself as the alternative to ANC governance; what happens when litigation threatens to become more about the litigant than the lawfulness of the conduct being challenged; and whether South Africans are prepared to apply the same constitutional standards to those they support politically as they do to those they oppose.

The baboons did not create these problems.

They merely led us far enough into the system to expose them.

The baboons exposed the DA for what it really is, and what we can expect from it when they are elected to replace the ANC.

What about the other political parties?

There is another uncomfortable chapter.

LFN did not only approach the DA.

Political parties including the ANC, Patriotic Alliance, EFF, Freedom Front Plus, ACDP, GOOD and others were notified through the developing litigation and correspondence. The documentary service record shows these parties, together with CapExit, were expressly included as interested parties in the broader proceedings.

Yet according to our own outreach record, of all those political organisations, only the Cape Independence Party, CapExit, actually stepped forward in support of our efforts regarding the baboons.

People are free to disagree with CapExit on every other political issue imaginable.

That is not the point.

The point is that when an actual public-interest fight required somebody to put their head above the parapet, CapExit did.

The silence of the others is their own record to explain.

‘But why isn’t LFN fighting the data centres and Digital ID?’

I have heard this criticism increasingly from people who once faithfully supported us.

Some have gone further and suggested that because LFN has not immediately launched the particular litigation they personally want to see, LFN must somehow have been compromised.

That accusation reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how we work.

LFN has never operated according to the principle of chasing every headline.

We practise targeted litigation.

We look for pressure points.

We look for legal architecture.

We look for one case which, if successful, can unlock consequences far beyond the parties named on its front page.

The Commissioner for the Environment is a perfect example.

Getting that constitutional office operational does not magically decide every dispute about data centres. Nor would it automatically resolve Digital ID, which raises different constitutional, privacy, administrative and technological questions.

But an independent constitutional environmental watchdog could become enormously important when massive data-centre projects raise questions of electricity consumption, water, land use, environmental authorisations, cumulative impact and public accountability.

That is how strategic litigation works.

You build the institution capable of investigating tomorrow’s controversy instead of filing fifty disconnected applications today.

At the same time LFN is fighting banks and the South African Reserve Bank, confronting conduct within the legal profession, engaging exchange-control reform, challenging judicial conduct, assisting ordinary members who cannot afford lawyers, and dealing with litigation that can consume months or years.

One organisation cannot simultaneously litigate every fear circulating through Telegram.

And pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

And no, ‘liberty’ does not mean begging for rights

Another criticism recently thrown at us is almost philosophical: that ‘liberty’ supposedly means something inferior to ‘freedom’, or that using constitutional rights somehow amounts to begging government for permission.

I reject that completely.

A right is not a favour.

Invoking a constitutional right is not standing outside government’s door with a begging bowl.

It is standing before government with its own founding law and saying:

You agreed to these limits. Obey them.

Liberty in a constitutional democracy includes freedom from arbitrary power, arbitrary detention, arbitrary deprivation, arbitrary administration and arbitrary government.

Rights are not the opposite of freedom.

Properly enforced, they are some of freedom’s strongest legal armour.

LFN’s name has never meant asking politicians to be kind to us.

It means confronting power with enforceable limits.

What the public usually does not see

This is where I need to say something personally.

People see the court papers.

They see the articles.

They see the videos.

They sometimes see me standing in court arguing with senior counsel on the other side.

What they do not see is everything surrounding it.

Some days I am drafting constitutional papers.

Some days I am preparing JSC complaints.

Some days I am answering desperate members.

Some days I am carrying files.

And some days I am quite literally dealing with poo and driving the poo truck because ordinary life does not stop merely because somebody is fighting a constitutional case.

That is the reality.

LFN does not have the machinery behind the institutions we challenge.

The City has ratepayer-funded structures.

Government departments have taxpayers.

Banks have billions.

Large firms have partners, associates, candidates, administrative staff and established infrastructure.

LFN has extremely limited voluntary support.

And lately even that limited support has been dwindling.

There have been days when the organisation’s bank balance has effectively been zero. I have reached the point where I have had to borrow from money intended for basic survival in a household already carrying terminal illness and dependent upon SASSA support simply to keep going.

I do not write that for sympathy.

I write it because people should understand the economics of ‘someone should take this to court’.

Someone must print it.

Someone must file it.

Someone must travel.

Someone must obtain records.

Someone must pay for data.

Someone must prepare bundles.

Someone must spend nights researching law rather than earning income elsewhere.

Someone must take the personal risk when respondents demand punitive costs.

Someone must still wake up the next morning when social media commentators announce that we have not done enough.

Someone must keep the fight for our liberty alive, while ensuring that his own family is not neglected in the process.

This is therefore not a begging letter

I am not asking anybody to rescue LFN.

I am asking people to decide whether they want LFN to continue existing.

There is a difference.

If you think independent public-interest litigation matters, help finance independent public-interest litigation.

If you believe somebody should challenge unconstitutional government conduct even when every major political party remains quiet, help keep that somebody operational.

If you believe banks, regulators, lawyers, politicians and judges should all be capable of being questioned within the law, support the organisation willing to ask the questions.

If you cannot donate, share our work.

Read the documents.

Come to court.

Challenge us when we are wrong.

Defend the principle when we are right.

But if you can contribute financially, understand what that contribution really represents.

It is not charity for Reyno De Beer.

It is fuel for independence.

It buys the organisation one more opportunity to say no when everybody with money is saying yes.

The strangest thing about this entire story

The baboons probably know nothing about section 34 of the Constitution.

They know nothing about the Biowatch principle.

They have never heard of Uniform Rule 28, judicial recusal, functus officio, the JSC, administrative legality or appellate procedure.

They do not know the Democratic Alliance.

They do not know Liberty Fighters Network.

They certainly do not know Fairbridges and the other legal practitioners wearing their black cloaks in court.

They simply know the mountains, the troops into which they were born, the places through which generations before them moved, and the difference between being free and being confined.

Yet somehow, through them, an extraordinary number of South African institutions have been placed under a spotlight.

A provincial Constitution.

A Commissioner who still does not occupy the office created for that purpose.

A DA-led provincial government.

A DA-led municipality.

SANParks.

CapeNature.

The Joint Task Team.

The legal fraternity.

The High Court.

The Judge President’s administration.

The Judicial Service Commission.

Political parties that were invited to act.

And a tiny voluntary association without gain which was told, in effect, that it treats courts like a playground – but which is still standing.

Perhaps that is what the baboons have exposed most clearly.

Power expects resistance to become too expensive.

It expects ordinary people to become tired.

It expects public-interest organisations to run out of money.

It expects court delays to exhaust the subject matter.

It expects punitive costs to frighten people away.

It expects reputational labels to make supporters hesitate.

And it expects the public eventually to stop paying attention.

LFN has no intention of making that expectation easy.

But independence without resources eventually becomes merely a noble idea.

So I leave every supporter with a choice rather than a plea:

If you want this work to continue, help make it possible.

Not because LFN is perfect.

Not because you must agree with every argument we make.

Not because anybody owes us anything.

Support it because an independent organisation capable of challenging any government, any political party, any bank, any regulator, any lawyer and, where necessary, the conduct of any judicial officer is worth keeping alive.

The baboons have already revealed far more than anybody expected.

The question now is whether South Africans are willing to look at what has been revealed – and whether enough people are prepared to ensure that those asking the uncomfortable questions can afford to keep asking them.

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