Holding public servants accountable within the public area mustn’t quantity to defamation. This was confirmed in Mabuyane v Malema (Japanese Cape Division, East London, case quantity: 2026-093607) in a excessive courtroom judgment delivered on 23 June 2026.
Choose Johannes Eksteen’s ruling is an impressive victory without cost speech, political accountability and customary sense in South African regulation. It is among the higher current excessive courtroom judgments on defamation involving politicians.
Public figures occupy a singular place in a constitutional democracy. They take pleasure in the identical proper to dignity and repute as everybody else however public workplace additionally comes with public scrutiny.
The current excessive courtroom judgment has once more positioned this delicate stability below the highlight.
The dispute arose after MP Julius Malema acknowledged that Japanese Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane had “stolen” a grasp’s diploma from the College of Fort Hare.
Mabuyane stated the statements implied fraud, dishonesty and legal conduct. Mabuyane sought an order declaring the statements defamatory and illegal, an interdict restraining Malema from repeating them or comparable statements and that whether or not an apology, retraction and damages be decided later by the use of oral proof.
The courtroom accepted that accusations of fraud and dishonesty had been inherently defamatory. Nonetheless, that was not the tip of the inquiry. Choose Eksteen held that it was a query of regulation whether or not Malema’s statements had been moderately able to conveying to the affordable reader a which means that defamed Mabuyane.
Mabuyane’s case rested on the technical argument {that a} diploma couldn’t be “stolen”. Whereas appropriate on a slim studying, this missed the purpose. The courtroom rightly held that the true sting of Malema’s assertion — understood by any affordable particular person — was that Mabuyane had acted dishonestly and fraudulently to acquire the qualification.
Having misplaced the semantic argument, the case turned on whether or not Malema might set up a defence that his statements had been considerably true and made within the public curiosity. In help of this defence, Malema relied on a forensic report commissioned by the College of Fort Hare.
The report discovered that Mabuyane’s grasp’s analysis proposal had successfully been authored and constantly refined by his personal supervisor and the supervisor’s workers, with Mabuyane titivating and paraphrasing right here and there. It additional discovered {that a} letter motivating his admission was later altered to recommend he held the very grasp’s diploma he was making use of to improve from, in help of a PhD software.
Mabuyane’s response to the report was that it was irrelevant as a result of it handled registration irregularities and never the “theft” of a level.
In authorized proceedings, a celebration that fails to dispute a harmful factual allegation is handled as having admitted it. Silence will not be a defence. Mabuyane by no means substantively engaged with the report’s findings; the choose accepted them as true. The findings help Malema’s defence of reality and public curiosity.
Mabuyane selected to battle the literal which means of “stolen” quite than confront the substantiated findings towards him. That’s not a defence. The courtroom was appropriate to not deal with it as one. The judgment might have been even stronger by extra forcefully criticising Mabuyane’s authorized technique. Bringing an pressing defamation case whereas dodging the core proof appears to be like like an try to intimidate critics quite than clear his identify. The courtroom was maybe too well mannered about this.
The lawfulness of the sitting premier’s acquisition of a postgraduate qualification, notably in an election yr, is a matter for public scrutiny. Accordingly, the courtroom held that Malema’s statements had been within the public curiosity.
Notably, the courtroom declined to recognise Malema’s various defence that, as an MP, his public statements on a matter of public concern attracted certified privilege. The courtroom additionally declined to recognise any broader rule that politicians loved blanket safety from defamation legal responsibility just by advantage of their workplace.
Whereas appropriately rejecting blanket certified privilege for politicians, the courtroom ought to have used the chance to underline that political speech on issues of public concern deserves heightened safety.
The judgment sends a transparent message: public accountability will not be defamation.
- Rupert Sweet Attorneys Integrated
