The Mail & Guardian will ”vigorously” contest any court order barring publication of an article on MTN chief executive officer Maanda Manyatshe, the newspaper’s editor, Ferial Haffajee, said on Friday.
”The M&G is concerned that dangerous precedent could be set should procedure be exploited to obtain de facto gags, even when the merits have not been argued,” she said.
Haffajee was commenting after the awarding of an interim interdict to Manyatshe on Thursday.
”This is the third pre-publication interdict granted against the media this year. We are concerned that this should not become a trend undermining press freedom,” she said.
”After this afternoon’s [Thursday’s] interdict, it is clear that an indaba between the judiciary and the media is necessary. Such a meeting would thrash out mutual areas of concern, like the time required for adequate right to reply, as well as the implications of such interdicts on the ability of newspapers to undertake investigative journalism.”
Granting the interim order, Judge Mohamed Jajbhay ruled that the M&G not be allowed to disseminate any information on the matter until the court reached its final decision on Friday, said M&G associate deputy editor Nick Dawes.
Jajbhay stressed that he was not making his ruling on the merits of the matter, and that the M&G might be permitted to publish the story once the application had been fully ”ventilated” in court.
He was aware that this meant the M&G would not be able to publish its story on Manyatshe in its Friday edition, the newspaper said in a statement.
”The way the court rules are being interpreted at the moment means it’s possible for anyone to buy time. Whatever the merits of the case are … they achieve their objectives,” said Dawes.
M&G reporters Stefaans Brümmer and Sam Sole sent questions to Manyatshe on Wednesday.
Former general manager of Engen Petroleum and former managing director of the South African Post Office, Manyatshe responded with a lawyer’s letter.
”They asked us to promise not to publish the story,” said Dawes. ”We declined to give them any such undertaking,” he said.
”They served us this morning [Thursday] with an application for an urgent interdict to prevent us from publishing the story we intended to publish or revealing the information we had on Mr Manyatshe.” — Sapa