African National Congress president Jacob Zuma is claiming R5-million from Rapport for defamation and crimen injuria, his spokesperson Liesl Gottert said on Thursday.
This latest claim comes just a day after he reached a R50 000 out-of-court settlement with the same paper for a previous defamation and crimen injuria claim.
Gottert said the latest claim was due to a ”degrading and defamatory heading above a photo with a caption that was printed in the publication on December 30 2007”.
”A heading that reads ‘Piekniek met Dingaan [Picnic with Dingaan]’ was printed above a photo of Mr Zuma, in the company of Messrs Leon Schuster and Steve Hofmeyr. The caption indicates that Mr Zuma was enjoying a braai with various well-known Afrikaners,” said Gottert.
On Thursday, Zuma said: ”Freedom of speech is one of the cornerstones in our democracy. As an ordinary South African I have the right to take someone to task if I believe his comment about me was unfair and unbalanced.”
Rapport editor Tim Du Plessis confirmed on Thursday that the paper had received a new lawyer’s letter from Zuma. The letter had been referred to the newspaper’s lawyers.
An initial assessment of the claim was that it was ”without merit and would be fully defended,” said Du Plessis.
Settlement
On Wednesday, Rapport had said it was satisfied to have reached an out-of-court settlement with Zuma over a previous claim, which related to a reader’s letter published in Rapport on April 2 2006 while the trial of Zuma on a charge of rape was under way in the Johannesburg High Court.
Du Plessis said on Wednesday the letter had contained one ”defamatory sentence”. He said the paper had retracted the sentence later and published an apology about it in October that year.
In 2006, Zuma lodged defamation claims against the media to the sum of R63-million. He is suing media owners, publishers, editors, reporters, cartoonists and newspapers. One of the claims against a newspaper concerns ”layout foul play”.
Broadcaster 94.7 Highveld Stereo is being sued for R7-million for broadcasting a song called My Name Is Zuma, commenting on the Zuma rape trial. It was played by Darren ”Whackhead” Simpson, a member of the radio station’s Rude Awakening team.
His biggest claim against a single publication is one of altogether R20-million against the Star. This claim consists of four different claims of R5-million each, three of which are against award-winning cartoonist Zapiro. The fourth is for an article accompanied by a manipulated photograph of Zuma.
The Sunday Times, Citizen, Sunday Sun, Sunday Independent and Sunday World are all being sued.
Nearly all the items in which Zuma feels he was defamed are opinion pieces or cartoons. — Sapa