Housing Minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele has expressed surprise at the judgement in the Johannesburg High Court on her case against the Mail&Guardian newspaper, her representative Mandla Mathebula said on Sunday.
”The minister is to seek further legal advice. The potential for the judgement to have wide ranging implications for government and individual rights mean that she will also consider opinion from her colleagues in cabinet,” Mathebula said in a statement.
He said the minister had sued the weekly newspaper in 2000 regarding a report published in 1999 and had demanded R3-million in damages.
Mr Justice Joffe dismissed the matter in the Johannesburg High Court on Friday.
Mthembi-Mahanyele launched the R3-million defamation action against the newspaper in the Johannesburg High Court on October 11, 2001, in response to how she fared in the paper’s 1998 Cabinet ”report card”.
The report card, which gave Mthembi-Mahanyele an F, referred to how the controversial Motheo housing saga and her sacking of former director general Billy Cobbett haunted her.
Mthembi-Mahanyele’s court papers said, among other things, that the report card portrayed her as a ”dishonest person” and ”of base moral standard”.
She alleged the M&G published recklessly and that it did not care whether the statement about her was true or false.
Roland Sutherland, SC, counsel for Mthembi-Mahanyele, argued before Judge Joffe that before continuing the trial, the court should determine whether the statement was defamatory.
The M&G’s advocate, Danny Berger, countered Sutherland’s application on the grounds that the court could not decide whether the report card was defamatory without hearing other evidence about the ”temper of the times”.
Judge Joffe turned down Sutherland’s application, upon which Sutherland closed the minister’s case without calling witnesses.
Berger also argued that Mthembi-Mahanyele did not have the right to sue the paper for a statement about her conduct in the course of her duties as a government minister.
Berger said the minister had constitutionally enshrined parliamentary privilege, enabling her to defame the M&G in Parliament without fearing a libel action.
This meant that she should not also be entitled to sue.
The M&G’s main defence to the minister’s lawsuit rested on the fact that the report card was written in good faith, that it expressed an honest opinion on a matter of public interest, and that it is the right of the press to make such comments. – Misa, Sapa