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- The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the finding that the EFF had defamed former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel.
- Manuel sued the EFF after it issued a statement saying he was corrupt.
- The court said the EFF allegations were clearly libelous and serious.
The EFF has failed in its efforts to appeal a court ruling in which and his leadership defamed former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel with his false claims that he oversaw a “corrupt” process to appoint the new commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (SARS). ) Edward Kieswetter.
But, in a ruling issued on Thursday morning, the Supreme Court of Appeals (SCA) chose not to endorse the award of the “extraordinarily high” R500,000 in damages to Manuel, and remitted the determination of the possible sanctions that he should face the EFF. -Including being forced to apologize to Manuel- to another court.
However, the SCA was scathing with the EFF, which claimed to base its attack on Manuel on a message delivered to it by a secret source.
“The accusations he made were clearly defamatory and concerned a public figure who had the responsibility to interview people and advise the president on the appointment of the SARS commissioner. That is a very serious accusation,” the SCA said.
“Doing so on the basis of such a message without any effort to confirm the veracity of the accusations is incompatible with the absence of an intention to hurt. It shows a willingness to hurt regardless of the veracity of the accusations.”
False claims of corruption, nepotism, ‘secret meetings’
Manuel sued the EFF, its leader Julius Malema and former national spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi after they issued a statement saying he was corrupt, nepotist, had behaved illegally, had conducted “secret interviews” and had participated in a secret process to select the new SARS commissioner.
They further claimed that the secret process was a deliberate attempt by Manuel to disguise his relationship and business association with Kieswetter and that he had previously made illegal appointments to positions in SARS when he was Minister of Finance.
READ | Malema: ‘We are not afraid of you, Trevor Manuel’
Manuel had headed the interview panel for the post of SARS commissioner, which made a recommendation to President Cyril Ramaphosa, who made the final decision. The former minister did not participate in the Kieswetter interview. The court found that the EFF, Malema and Ndlozi statements were all “factually false” and supported their claims that the appointment process was “nepotistic and corrupt”.
“If steps had been taken to verify the accuracy of the source information and no basis had been discovered for it, that would have dictated the need for much more care before publishing,” the court said.
EFF has 24 hours to remove the statement
“Other avenues of investigation could have been explored. The most obvious would have been to go directly to Mr. Manuel or Mr. Kieswetter and ask if the accusations were true.”
The problem for the EFF in approaching Manuel directly, the court said, was that “if the answer was that the accusations were false, it would draw a potential political weapon from its arsenal.”
“Doing an investigation and knowing the correct facts ran the risk of turning a possible bomb into a wet firecracker.”
The SCA ruling means that the EFF has 24 hours to withdraw its defamatory and false statement about Manuel.
He has also been ordered to pay the former minister’s costs on a punitive scale.
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