(MISA/IFEX) – The Media Institute of Southern Africa – South Africa (MISA-SA) is alarmed at the judiciary’s continuing imposition of restrictions on the publication of information, actions which constitute unacceptable judicial censorship. Most recently, the Cape High Court ordered vitamin salesman Matthias Rath to stop publishing statements accusing the Treatment Action Campaign of acting as […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The Media Institute of Southern Africa – South Africa (MISA-SA) is alarmed at the judiciary’s continuing imposition of restrictions on the publication of information, actions which constitute unacceptable judicial censorship.
Most recently, the Cape High Court ordered vitamin salesman Matthias Rath to stop publishing statements accusing the Treatment Action Campaign of acting as a front for pharmaceutical companies.
The order follows a judicial ban on the publication by newspapers of the notorious Muhammed cartoons, and a similar ban on the publication of information on the notorious Oilgate scandal by “The Mail and Guardian”. (The scandal was subsequently neutralised by a political intervention in parliament.)
Although MISA-SA does not endorse Rath’s questionable allegedly anti HIV-AIDS conduct, the manner in which he has been restrained from making public statements violates the principles of free speech and freedom of expression.
MISA-SA objects to the order just as it condemned the interdiction against newspapers publishing the Muhammed cartoons and the ban on “The Mail and Guardian”.
Presiding Judge Siraj Desai stated in his judgment that “the limited restraint on free speech, resulting from the order I make, is not directed at stopping the respondents from participating in a debate of immense public importance. The restraint is directed at the manner in which the respondents have chosen to participate in the debate and the methods they chose to employ”.
MISA-SA contends that the plaintiffs from the Treatment Action Campaign had another, more appropriate legal recourse available by which to deal with Rath’s “defamatory” statements: to sue him for defamation, which would have silenced him without violating the principle of free speech.
The principle of freedom of expression was upheld in an earlier ruling on 17 February 2006 by Justice Fritz van Oosten in the Johannesburg High Court. Van Oosten rejected an application by Johannesburg coin dealer Bert Gemelgo and his company, Solid Gold Consultants, SA, seeking to prevent the “Saturday Star” newspaper from publishing a report about Gemelgo’s business practices, ruling that it was understood that freedom of the press was a cornerstone of a strong democracy” and that the Johannesburg High Court would “jealously guard such principles”.
Gemelgo had argued that the report accused him of fraud but the judge found nothing in the report that was either unfair or untrue.
MISA-SA calls on the judiciary to recognise that the imposition of court bans on the publication of information, whether by the media or other means, undermines the values of the Constitution, especially when complainants have other remedies at their disposal to seek redress of wrongs.
