Writer Ronald Roberts threatened at least 25 individuals at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), including the entire board, with criminal and civil action when the corporation refused to apologise to him over a broadcast he objected to, the Cape High Court heard recently.
Roberts also threatened to complain to the Public Protector, the Human Rights Commission, the Commission on Gender Equality, the police, the prosecuting authorities and the Scorpions about a panel discussion on fathers’ rights of access to their children. He sent more than 400 pages of letters and emails to the SABC on the issue.
The letter blitz revolved around claims that the SABC had unwittingly revealed details of a divorce settlement involving a woman to whom he was married at the time. He complained that the broadcast amounted to child abuse.
Advocate Wim Trengove, who is representing the Sunday Times in a defamation case brought by Roberts, described the writer’s actions as “absurd” and “relentless”.
Roberts insisted in court that he was merely being “zealous”. But conceded that some of the letters were “over the top”.
Counsel for the Sunday Times also put it to him that he was a name-dropper and bully who reacted excessively when he did not get his own way.
Roberts is suing the Sunday Times and its publishers, Johncom Media Investments, for R300Â 000 for allegedly defaming him in 2004.
The lawsuit was prompted by a personality profile written by freelance journalist Chris Barron under the headline “The unlikeable Mr Roberts”. In this, Barron wrote that Roberts’s “pursuit of anyone who says anything against him is so notoriously obsessive that few people are prepared to be quoted on him. He pursued the SABC relentlessly for months after it unwittingly included someone charged with child abuse on a programme.”
Roberts visibly lost his cool a number of times this week while under cross-examination and was asked by acting Justice Leslie Weinkove to shorten his answers to questions. “You will be here for a very long time if you debate every single point,” the judge said.
On numerous occasions, Trengove asked him not to interrupt and reminded him that it was he (Trengove) who asked the questions and Roberts who was required to answer.
“Your job is simply to answer me and not to put questions to me. Do you understand that?” he asked Roberts on Thursday.
Roberts has been in the witness box since Tuesday and the case is likely to continue next week.
An attorney himself, Roberts worked at the law firm Deneys Reitz. The circumstances of his departure from the firm are an issue in the current court case.
On his fall-out with Nadine Gordimer, of whom he wrote a biography, Roberts said the Nobel Prize-winning novelist suffered from “weird vanity” because she had asked him to omit certain personal details from his book.
Roberts, born in Trinidad, told the court several times that he studied at Oxford University and Harvard Law School before coming to South Africa in 1994 and deciding to stay.
The Mail & Guardian has learnt that he offered an out-of-court settlement to the Sunday Times this week, but this was rejected. When the M&G asked him about the settlement offer, he snorted and walked away.