Bongani Majola
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils South Africa’s former deputy defence minister this week instituted defamation action against four newspapers for their coverage of the arms deal.
The papers are Business Day, Pretoria News Weekend, Saturday Argus and Sunday Tribune.
Kasrils claims the newspapers defamed him by publishing articles stating that he was being investigated by the National Director of Public Prosecutions, the Office of the Public Protector and the Office of the Auditor-General for corruption and irregularities in the government’s R43-billion arms deal. The minister is suing the four publications for a total of R900000, with Business Day being sued for R150 000 and the others R250 000 each.
According to Kasrils’s representative, Esther Waugh, the newspapers had reported the minister was implicated “in money laundering, accepting bribes in the form of cash payments running into millions of rands and obtaining luxury 4×4 vehicles”.
Kasrils had sought an apology and a retraction from the newspapers after getting an undertaking in writing from the Auditor General that he was not being investigated. Waugh said the editors refused to apologise.
However, legal experts doubt whether Kasrils’ court action would succeed. A lawyer, who cannot be identified for professional reasons, said it was “debatable in our law whether a cabinet minister can sue, since governments generally cannot be defamed and the developing trend is for ministers to have less protection than ordinary citizens”.
Scotch Tagwireyi, of the Freedom of Expression Institute, says that as a holder of public office, the minister is subject to scrutiny by the media and he sees no harm in probing Kasrils as “he was deputy defence minister at the time and thus liable to a public inquiry. If the office of the Auditor General says he is not being probed, why was that information not supplied to the media in the first instance? Doesn’t this raise questions about the whole arms deal investigation?”
Peter Davis, editor of the Sunday Tribune, says the story originated with the Saturday Argus in Cape Town and he is not particularly apprehensive about the suit as “it’s not new for newspapers to be sued by politicians but as soon as we receive the summons we will investigate further”.
Editor-in-chief of Pretoria News Thabo Leshilo confirmed receiving the summons and says the “matter is now in the hands of our lawyers”.