Holomisa must be ‘hit with cost order’
Government Employees Pension Fund chair Renosi Mokate’s lawyers say UDM leader Bantu Holomisa must be hit with a punishing legal costs order, for trying to use his parliamentary privilege to avoid being sued for making false and defamatory statements about her.
Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) chair Renosi Mokate’s lawyers say UDM leader Bantu Holomisa must be hit with a punishing legal costs order, for trying to use his parliamentary privilege to avoid being sued for making false and defamatory statements about her.
Mokate’s advocate, Cedric Pukrin, on Wednesday accused Holomisa of resorting to an “untenable stratagem” to evade responsibility for claiming that she was a “locust” embroiled in the looting of the Development Bank of SA.
Days after receiving notice that Mokate was taking him to court over a June 17 2020 letter he wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa about her alleged role in DBSA looting, Holomisa sent that same letter to the speaker of parliament, Thandi Modise.
The UDM leader’s advocate, Dali Mpofu, argued that, by submitting his letter to parliament, Holomisa was entitled to receive the same immunity from civil or criminal action granted to MPs who make disclosures in the National Assembly.
“What we are invoking is the immunity contained in the constitution, and that immunity simply says that this court or any other court ... does not have jurisdiction to listen to this case,” Mpofu said.
But on Wednesday, Pukrin criticised that argument as “ridiculous”.
“I’m going to submit it’s nonsense. An MP can defeat any defamation claim, once it’s instituted, by writing to parliament and repeating it to parliament? It’s ridiculous. Of course, the statement that is being assailed must be made to the parliament prior to the action being instituted,” said Pukrin.
Mokate is adamant that the claims made about her in the disputed letter, in which Holomisa complained about “the apparent looting of state resources by some of the very same individuals that were found to have had enhanced ability to secure easy access to Public Investment Corporation (PIC) funds”, are manifestly false and defamatory.
Pukrin said Mokate had been forced to seek urgently the retraction of the letter because she was the chair of “one of the largest pension funds in the world” and Holomisa’s statement would continue to cause anxiety and uncertainty for the hundreds of thousands of government employees who depended on it.
In his letter, Holomisa claimed that Mokate, former deputy finance minister and Harith General Partners chair Jabu Moleketi and his fellow Harith directors were all directors of a company called Poseidon, which he alleged had received R50m in funding from the DBSA “to conduct feasibility studies, for some kind of water project/s, in SA and other Southern African countries”. He said that “another R300m is apparently to be disbursed for the implementation of Poseidon’s project”.
Holomisa later conceded that Mokate was, in fact, not listed as a director of Poseidon.
While Harith had joined Mokate in seeking an urgent interdict to force Holomisa to delete and apologise for his disputed letter, it has elected to pursue its R3.2m defamation case against Holomisa in a nonurgent court hearing. The date for that case has yet to be set.
Judge Ronel Tolmay reserved judgment on Mokate’s application, but warned the parties in the case that — due to the huge pressures courts were under as
AN MP CAN DEFEAT ANY DEFAMATION CLAIM ... BY WRITING TO PARLIAMENT AND REPEATING IT TO PARLIAMENT? IT’S RIDICULOUS
a result of the Covid-19 pandemic — they should not expect that ruling any time soon.