Times faces legal threat over report on SABC
While Aaron did respond in the article, he claimed yesterday that the Sunday Times had not kept to the agreed questions and had taken a defamatory stance against his client, who is also being implicated in cases of intimidating senior employees.
A letter was received by the Sunday Times yesterday from Barry Aaron & Associates law firm, which has since cut ties with the SABC as its legal representative. The paper reported the firm had benefited from a “conflict of interest” which earned it R1,9m from the SABC “thanks to his links with Sihlali”, it said.
It implicated other unnamed firms as well.
Aaron told the paper that it would be suing on the grounds of “defamation action, contempt and obstruction of justice”.
No court papers have been received by the paper as yet, but Aaron told Business Day yesterday it was “likely to be within the next two weeks”.
Aaron added that he was also giving the Mail & Guardian newspaper, which was successfully prevented last week from running the same story, until this Friday to prove that it had taken sufficient steps to “prevent distribution of copies containing the allegations last Friday”.
It is understood that the Mail & Guardian received the report on Thursday morning — the day it would go to print — and was informed of a high court interdict restricting it from printing and distributing the story only late Thursday evening.
Aaron said the newspaper “didn’t try to contact me, Mafika (Sihlali), or any of the other law firms” and that “only at 3pm on Thursday did I find out about the article”.
This, he said, was just three hours before the newspaper would go to print. He said he had received a copy of the report and called it “atrocious”.
Aaron said on the SABC website yesterday that, because of the defamatory nature of the report, the SABC should have been more cautious and should not have allowed it to have been leaked.
According to the news reports, SABC CE Dali Mpofu was advised to get rid of Sihlali in April this year. Sihlali still has his job today.
Mondli Makhanya, the Sunday Times editor, said on the SABC website that the court order applied specifically to the Mail & Guardian as it had not given those named sufficient time to respond.
He said Aaron had indicated that he had “made peace with the fact that we were going to publish”.
SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago told Business Day yesterday that the SABC would not comment as it was an internal matter, as per its policy.
Kganyago also confirmed he had made comments on the Bizcommunity.com website, implying that print media in SA was biased in their reportage on the SABC.
He did not say to which newspapers he was referring to.
Loading ...