The Constitutional Court last week ruled in favour of United Democratic Movement leader General Bantu Holomisa in a long-running case against the Sowetan Sunday World.
The matter arises out of a report in which the paper printed allegations that Holomisa was involved in a robbery syndicate.
The case was initially heard at the Transvaal High Court, where the court ruled in favour of Holomisa.
In its defence, the newspaper maintained that the onus of proving the falsity of the allegations lay with Holomisa, since the matter was of public interest and involves a political figure. The High Court, however, applied a common law principle in which the injured party merely disputes the allegations.
The Constitutional Court upheld the ruling and the case will now be referred back to the High Court in Pretoria.
Upon delivery of the judgement, a member of Holomisa’s legal team expressed confidence of reaching a settlement.
George Sibanda, an attorney representing Sowetan Sunday World, said the paper was considering its options and could not comment.
Holomisa’s attorney, Johan Gouws, was not available for comment.
- Holomisa this week rose to defend the Mail & Guardian in Parliament against an attack by an African National Congress Youth League leader for the paper’s cover story on the late Peter Mokaba last Friday.
The M&G carried a report on Mokaba’s alleged confession in the early 1980s that he had been an apartheid spy.
Youth League president Malusi Gigaba attacked the newspaper at Mokaba’s funeral last Friday.
In his attack, aired on SABC news, Gigaba urged people not to buy the newspaper, which he described as ”counter revolutionary”.
Hitting back at Gigaba in Parliament this week, Holomisa reminded the ANC that one of its members — South African Communist Party deputy secretary Jeremy Cronin — was ”a one-time columnist” for the newspaper’s forerunner, the Weekly Mail.
In his column, Cronin had once described Mokaba, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Tony Yengeni and Holomisa as populists and ”suggested that some of us were apartheid agents”.
Holomisa said: ”It is therefore strange that now the ANC would criticise a paper that they supported when the poisonous fountain pen of the honourable Cronin graced its pages.”
He said it had become an ”instinctive preoccupation of some of the so-called intellectuals in the ruling party to call you names if you differ with them”.
”But we should all agree that the turnout at the funeral indicates that people recognised Peter’s contribution, despite Cronin’s assertion,” said Holomisa.