This edition of the Mail & Guardian contains an article on the Steve Mabona saga which a judge barred us from publishing last week. This is after a new attempt to gag the newspaper failed on Thursday.
Last week the lead article on page four had to be pulled after the Pretoria High Court granted an interdict to Positioning Corporate Underwriters and Insurance Consultants (PCUIC), a company which the M&G revealed made personal payments totalling R1-million to Mabona.
Judge Piet van der Bijl then agreed with PCUIC boss Walter Senoko that he had not been given enough time to respond to questions, and he temporarily barred publication.
This week PCUIC took the matter back to the Pretoria High Court, claiming it had a right to see a draft of the article before publication and asking for a further gag order. The M&G had refused to supply a draft.
In court on Thursday, counsel for PCUIC asked Judge Essop Patel for a postponement on technical grounds — and asked for an interim order barring publication pending another hearing next week.
Patel interjected during argument that he was concerned that “this could become a pattern of repeatedly restraining the media — it’s a retreat to the past, and a dangerous one.”
Paul Strathern, counsel for the M&G, argued that since the intended article related to issues of public expenditure, publication was in the public interest. He said the M&G had given PCUIC a reasonable opportunity for comment by posing questions — and that a week later the same questions remained unanswered.
In his judgement Judge Patel slammed PCUIC’s application, saying the company was seeking censorship, which was “subversive of the very ethos” of freedom of expression, a constitutional right. “I will certainly not issue an order for the relief sought.”
Judge Patel also made a cost order against PCUIC on attorney-client scale — a punitive measure. He said this was because rather than answering questions as it had had the opportunity to do, PCUIC had attempted another gag without putting new information before the court. “This smacks of discourtesy not only to the respondent [the M&G] but also to the court.”
This week’s was the third interdict attempt by PCUIC against the M&G. A first attempt, intended to stop the M&G’s original article a fortnight ago, which exposed PCUIC’s payments to Mabona, also failed.
M&G editor Mondli Makhanya commented: “After we were gagged last week, we undertook to tell readers the full story. We now fulfil that promise. The judgement demonstrates that the Constitution will not allow the suppression of South Africans’ right to know.”