Owing to advantages gained by the Bushmen in the war along the interior mountain range, and the abandonment of about a hundred farms by the colonists, the government directed the landdrosts of Graaff-Reinet, Swellendam, and Stellenbosch, with the heemraden of those districts, to hold a combined meeting in Capetown on the 1st of July 1792, under the presidency of Colonel Gordon, for the purpose of arranging a plan of military operations. On the day appointed, Mr. Woeke did not appear, so on the 2nd of July the council suspended him from duty, and called upon him to answer for his conduct. A military officer—Captain Bernard Cornelis van Baalen—was directed to proceed to Graaff-Reinet as soon as arrangements could be made, and to act there as landdrost until further orders. The old secretary Wagener and Mr. Jan Gysbert van Reenen, the latter of whom was a man of experience in frontier matters, were requested to aid the combined landdrosts and heemraden with their advice.

On the 13th of July Colonel Gordon laid before the council of policy the report that had been agreed upon. It recommended that a commando of at least a hundred burghers should be called out in the district of Swellendam, and another of equal strength in the district of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, that these commandos should be provided for a campaign of three months, and should meet at the farm of Jan Adam Raubenheimer at the Zwartberg, on the 31st of August.