TOP LAWYER SUES SIYENZA ‘TOILETS ATTORNEY’
Prominent legal figure determined to clear his name in toilet saga
Prominent Eastern Cape attorney Dumisani Tabata’s R500,000 defamation lawsuit against Johannesburg lawyer Themba Langa may have become at least financially academic after Langa was recently sequestrated.
But, although Langa may now not be in a position to cough up money if the Grahamstown high court finds against him, Tabata will pursue the matter.
He remains determined the courts should confirm he had been defamed when Langa falsely suggested he had “leaned” on two judges in a bid to get a favourable ruling in the Siyenza toilet tender debacle.
Tabata and his law firm Smith Tabata Inc are suing Langa for R500,000 for reputational damages they say they suffered when Langa in 2015 wrote a letter of “complaint” 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 suggests he had information that Tabata had attempted to lean on two judges to get a favourable ruling for the Amathole District Municipality in its case against Siyenza.
Langa has subsequently admitted that the allegations were false, but claims he was obliged to draw them to the attention of the judge president.
Tabata maintains the letter was maliciously written with the intention of defaming him and his firm.
The East London high court in December 2016 set aside Siyenza’s R630m tender to build toilets for the ADM.
The court found both Siyenza and the ADM had sidestepped prescribed tender procedures, and instead illegally “manoeuvred” Siyenza into the contract.
Last year, Langa wrote an unreserved apology, implying that the letter to Sangoni was written on the instructions of his client, the Siyenza group, which now acknowledged that the claims were entirely false.
Although Langa’s sequestration has complicated matters, his attorney Mark Nettelton confirmed the case against him would proceed.
He said a sequestration order stayed all legal proceedings until the trustee appointed in terms of the sequestration had been joined as a respondent.
He said the trustee had indicated that she would not oppose any relief sought, nor would she become involved in the litigation.