Victory at court for the Cape Independent

Over the past few months, we have been fighting a challenge from Chinese billionaire Lu Heng.

This came after we challenged his aggressive strategy for undermining the African internet registry, AFRINIC. Effectively, he had been using underhanded and extremely unethical tactics to take control of both AFRINIC and its Asian counterpart APNIC, and I wrote an extensive article covering the situation. Effectively the man was seeking to privatise and commoditise a free resource (IPv4 addresses) which would have caused the price, and consequently the cost of doing business online to skyrocket, for his benefit.

We were soon hit with a defamation lawsuit, but lacking the funds, I had to find legal representation at risk.

Fortunately, Ralph Kujawa and Ronald “Pine” Pienaar came to the rescue, but by the time they did, the other side got the jump on us, and we were due for set-down with a judge who I was warned was not particularly friendly. The applicant’s legal team offered to settle, and I was advised to comply, but I refused to sign anything that would admit wrongdoing, or prohibit me from writing on this topic again. My facts were airtight.

The opposing council agreed to let us alone if we unpublished the articles, and told my advocate that I would be able to publish again if I “did my research properly”. We agreed to make the agreement an order of the court. So I removed the original article, and immediately wrote an even more damning article, which is available here: The campaign to subvert Africa’s internet registry

Despite complying, I was struck with a contempt of court charge. The tricky bit here is that in South African law, advocates can’t testify or sign affidavits concerning what was said to them under negotiation. This appeared to have been a trap. Fortunately for me, my lawyer was present to witness this conversation, and the lawyer isn’t bound by this rule, something opposing council seems to have forgotten.

But as luck would have it, my advocate had his hand mauled by a dog and had his car stolen around this time, rendering him incapable of representing me, and the lawyer was tied up in other work.

I scrambled around for help, and soon a tech entrepreneur troubled by Lu Heng’s behaviour offered to cover my legal fees, and Mark Oppenheimer and Wian Spies agreed to represent me. The case was quick, and the judge was pissed off with the clownish tactics of the other side.

So I am free and clear, and with the backup I have, I feel confident that we won’t be seeing too much trouble any time soon.

It’s nice to be back.