Lawyer facing suit over toilets tender fails to pitch
JOHANNESBURG attorney Themba Langa – who is facing a R500 000 defamation suit for suggesting a top East London attorney “leaned” on two judges in a bid to get a favourable ruling in the notorious Siyenza toilet tender debacle – was a no-show in court yesterday.
Prominent attorney Dumisani Tabata and his law firm Smith Tabata are suing Langa for half a million for reputational damages they say they suffered when Langa wrote a letter of “complaint” in 2015 about Tabata to then Eastern Cape Judge President Themba Sangoni.
In the letter, written three days before the Siyenza case was due to be argued in the East London High Court, Langa suggested he had information that Tabata had attempted to pressure two judges to give a favourable ruling to the Amathole District Municipality (ADM) in its case against Siyenza.
At the time, Langa was acting for Siyenza. Ironically, Tabata had never been the instructing attorney on behalf of ADM.
Langa has subsequently admitted in a letter that the allegations were false, but maintains he was obliged at the time to draw them to the attention of the Judge President.
In December 2016 the East London High Court set aside Siyenza’s R630million tender to build toilets for the AMD. The court found both Siyenza and the ADM had sidestepped prescribed tender procedures, and instead illegally “manoeuvred” Siyenza into the contract.
In his letter to Sangoni, Langa claimed Tabata had informed the two judges that he was acting on behalf of powerful businessman Mikki Xayiya who, Langa alleged, wanted to “compromise” Siyenza’s implementation of the contract.
In the letter he also accused Xayiya of “infiltrating” the Daily Dispatch to wrongfully report on the contract.
He suggests the two judges, who were not named, had refused to “be corrupted”.
Langa had last year written an unreserved apology to Xayiya, implying the letter was written on the instructions of his client, the Siyenza group, which now acknowledged that the claims were entirely false.
He said the group extended the retraction and apology to Tabata. Xayiya accepted the apology.
But Tabata remains determined to take the matter to court. In court papers, he maintains the allegations were made with the malicious intent to defame him and his firm.
Tabata, flanked by his attorney Mark Nettelton and senior counsel advocate Ben Ford, was at the Grahamstown High Court all ready to testify yesterday. But there was no sign of Langa or his counsel.
Finally, Langa’s Grahamstown correspondent firm of attorneys, Mqeke, indicated that Langa required a postponement. The case was postponed to August 15, with Langa agreeing to pay the wasted costs of the postponement on a punitive scale.
“We were informed he was unable to secure the services of counsel to represent him timeously,” Nettelton said. This is despite the matter being set down in June last year to be argued yesterday.