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Fidelis Munyoro
Chief Court Reporter
A full bench of the South African High Court in Gauteng has rejected an attempt by social media activist, Rutendo Matinyarare, seeking to suspend the operation of the court order forcing him to take down defamatory videos and statements he posted on his social media platforms.
Matinyarare sought to continue publishing the defamatory content while waiting for leave to appeal against three High Court orders, but the full bench said he had to take them down until he won the appeal, which they thought was unlikely.
Failure to comply with the court orders against him would have seen Matinyarare going to jail for at least three months.
Following the rejection of his appeal, Matinyarare complied with the court orders in a bid to avoid imprisonment.
In his appeal, Matinyarare had argued that the information he published about Innscor was factual and scientific and thus not defamatory, and as such, this information should not be removed as this would prejudice the Zimbabwean people and deprive them of information about what they consume.
He wanted Innscor stopped from executing the order against him until the main appeal was decided.
But the full bench of Justice Majake Meshack Mabesele, Justice Leicester Rock Adams and Justice Mokate Victor Noko, tossed out the appeal noting that Matinyarare’s prospects of success against the order of Justice Petrus Gcinumuzi Malindi in any appeal were poor.
“And because the appellants have so little prospect of success in obtaining leave to appeal, the Malindi order should not be suspended,” said the judges dismissing the appeal with costs.
The judge said it was self-evident that Innscor, which is involved in a volatile industry, would suffer irreparable harm.
He added that if Matinyarare continued his defamatory statements about Innscor and its food products and continued to act contrary to the order of Justice Christopher Wanless, there was little doubt that the reputation of the food making company will suffer damage from which it will recover with extreme difficulty.
“There is no guarantee, in any event, that a damages claim against the appellants would have any measure of success from a recovery point of view,” the judges said.
“The respondents (Innscor and Mr Z. Koundounaris) must expect to suffer harm of a kind that is ordinarily associated with the appellate process taking its course, and without interim redress.
“But harm that is out of the ordinary requires intervention. Here, the appellants run the real risk of irreparable damage to its good name and reputation built up over many years.”
In this case, the Judges ruled there is, therefore, good reason to intervene in terms of the law to prevent further losses suffered by Innscor as a result of Matinyarare’s continued defamation and his contempt of the court orders.
Matinyarare flagrantly disregarded three orders by Justice Namhla Thina Siwendu, Justice Wanless and Justice Malindi given over seven months.
The latest ruling found that Matinyarare’s justification for his disregard and contempt of the orders was that they were not competently granted. However, the judge found that the folly of this approach could not be overstated and ruled that, “it cannot be that in a constitutional democracy, with the rule of law as one of its founding values, a person can and should take it upon himself to decide which laws to comply with and which ones not.”
After the court ruling, Matinyarare posted on his X handle that he had complied with the court ruling.
Online Reporter