‘No shred of evidence’ for UDM claims

The Constitutional Court has dismissed with costs the appeal brought by the UDM and its leader Bantu Holomisa against a 2018 judgment of the high court in Pretoria.

The case related to defamatory allegations Holomisa made against the Lebashe Investment Group and five others.

The Constitutional Court upheld the interim high court interdict against the UDM and Holomisa pending a defamation action to be instituted by Lebashe and its co-respondents Harith General Partners, Harith Fund Managers, Warren Wheatley (director and chief investment officer of Lebashe), Tshepo Mahloele (a director and CEO of the two Harith companies and chair of Lebashe) and Jabulani Moleketi (a nonexecutive director of Lebashe and chair of the Harith companies).

The high court ordered the UDM and Holomisa to cease making or repeating the allegations against the respondents or from defaming or injuring their dignity, and to remove and delete the offending material from the UDM website and from Holomisa’s Twitter account.

‘NO VALID REASON’

The order was made on the grounds that the UDM and Holomisa failed to show that the information contained in a letter that the opposition leader wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa was true and in the public interest.

In the letter, published on the UDM website, Holomisa accused Harith and Lebashe of corruption and allegedly fleecing the Public Investment Corporation, and asked Ramaphosa to investigate it. Holomisa stated publicly on TV that the respondents were engaged in dodgy deals that surpassed state capture by the Guptas.

Lebashe and the other respondents said Holomisa had no valid reason to make such untrue and defamatory allegations, which caused them irreparable financial harm in that they lost certain investment opportunities. They said they worked in an industry that is sensitive to perceptions of integrity and trustworthiness.

The UDM and Holomisa argued in their defence that they had a constitutional duty to expose corruption in the use of public funds. As an opposition party the UDM was required to demand accountability.

Holomisa contended that the letter to Ramaphosa was in the public interest, but the Constitutional Court rejected this argument.

‘MISTAKEN BELIEF’

The top court said that in the execution of their constitutional duty to expose and ferret out corruption, the UDM and Holomisa had to act within the law. They had allegedly received defamatory information from whistleblowers, “and then they went and published it under a mistaken belief that it was for the benefit of the public to do so, without having ascertained the correctness and truthfulness of the information they had received”, the court said.

The Constitutional Court found that the UDM and Holomisa failed to prove that the allegations were true and in the public interest. They had portrayed the respondents as “thieves, fraudsters, corrupt and dishonest. It goes without saying that such a statement is defamatory of the respondents.”

The UDM and Holomisa “did not provide any shred of evidence of actual misconduct, corruption and self-dealing” by the respondents, the court said.

“The applicants were not entitled to wantonly defame the respondents under the pretext that they were executing a constitutional duty. It was not for the public benefit to publish the unverified defamatory information,” the Constitutional Court said in its unanimous judgment.