EFF welcomes Media24’s Daily Sun High Court judgment that published unlawful and defamatory statements against Dr Ndlozi

20 September 2023

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) welcomes the judgement by the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg Division which found that reports by the Daily Sun, a Media24 outlet, contained both in its print and digital

media platforms alleging that Dr. Mbuyiseni Ndlozi had supposedly raped an individual, were "unlawful and defamatory".

The judgement concluded that Media24 must "remove these unlawful and defamatory statements from all its media platforms including its website, Twitter account, and Facebook account within one week of the date of this order".

In essence, the Media24's Daily Sun unlawfully printed accusations that were false, baseless, and caused grave harm to the reputation and person of Dr. Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. Media24 was further directed "pay the costs of the application to date, including the costs of two counsel."

Media24 could not even use the principle of public interest to defend their nefarious and defamatory article. In the judgement, Judge S D J Wilson states that "

any public benefit derived from reporting the fact of the complaint against Dr. Ndlozi was outweighed by the public interest in keeping the complaint private at the very early stage of an investigation at which it was reported. It follows that [Media24]... failed to demonstrate that... impugned statements were published for the public benefit.

Accordingly, the publication of those statements was defamatory and unlawful."

This is another of court's damming finding. That Koos Bekker's Media24 actually interfered with a police investigation by publishing a rape complaint even before police could put the case to an alleged perpetrator.

This is a powerful and an unprecedented judgement that actually benefits and protects GBV cases. Thus, it is also a big victory for investigations in GBV related crimes. The judgement adds that: "If a rape complainant cannot be confident that their statement will not be promptly leaked to, and published by, the media, just hours after it is made, they may well decide not to report their assault at all."

Many well know women have elected not to go to the police and report abuse because their affidavits are leaked to the media. Many more have investigations of their cases compromised by such poor and desperate journalism. This is therefore a big victory for the victims of GBV, majority of which are women.

At the time, the EFF illustrated clearly that there was no verifiable possibility that Dr. Ndlozi was at the location of the said incident. The reporters were themselves invited to engage in a responsible journalistic investigation which awaits and prioritises the police investigation. Yet, for expediency, which has a profit benefit in sales, and because they wanted to harm the EFF's public standing, they rushed for publication, which was unlawful and defamatory.

The EFF calls on Media 24 to comply with the judgement with immediate effect. We call on them to issue a public apology of the same publication degree as the defamatory statements. We call on them to pay damages and commit to practice responsible journalism moving forward.

This judgement must never be weaponized to discredit genuine victims of rape and Gender Based Violence. We must all unite as society to fight against GBV always avoiding the politicisation of matters of this nature.

The media fraternity itself must always operate with the highest level of integrity, research, and verification, so as to avoid malicious destruction of people's reputations in the pursuit of sales, profits and breaking news.

Issued by Sinawo Thambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 20 February 2023