News24 | Judge grants Mbalula gag order against Anele Mda over ‘defamatory’, ‘false’ tweets

ANC secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula.

• North West businessman Wandile Bozwana was killed in a hail of bullets in 2015.
• Last year, notorious taxi boss Vusi “Khekhe” Mathibela and his three co-accused were each sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder.
• ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has won an urgent court appeal to force Anele Mda to take down posts he says falsely link him to the killing.

The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria has ruled that social commentator Anele Mda’s tweets implicating ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula in the murder of businessman Wandile Bozwana are “defamatory and false” – and ordered her to remove and apologise for them.

In a ruling given on Wednesday morning, Judge Selby Baqwa said it could not be denied that Mda’s “defamatory remarks constituted an unabated assault on his [Mbalula’s] reputation in the face of objective evidence of the killers of the deceased having been dealt with by our courts”.

“This shows malice and ill-will harboured by her utterances,” he added.

The judge has ordered that Mda be “restrained and interdicted from publishing any statement that says or implies that [Mbalula] was directly or indirectly complicit in the killing of Wandile Bozwana”.

READ | Mbalula launches urgent court bid to gag Anele Mda over posts linking him to Bozwana murder

In his ruling, Baqwa found that Mda’s publication of the disputed tweets – which followed Mbalula’s comments that KwaZulu-Natal police chief Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s decision to announce serious accusations of criminal infiltration into the justice system in a televised press conference “borders on lawlessness and a banana republic” – was “unlawful”.

In her first disputed tweet to Mbalula, Mda had posted:

“Wena igama lakho liyavela ekubulaweni kuka Wandile Bozwana (Your name shows up/appears/is implicated in Bozwana’s murder). The question still stands: what were you doing in Sandton with the guys who were driving the car that followed Wandile Bozwana and whose occupants shot and instantly killed Bozwana in 2015, around Menlyn? Awusitsheli lokho! Kwa wena ufanelwe yijele gha (you don’t tell us that. Even you were supposed to be in jail/jailed).”

Bozwana, who Mbalula describes as a “friend”, died in a hail of bullets along Garsfontein Road in Pretoria on 2 October 2015 while driving with his business associate Mpho Baloyi. Baloyi survived the attack.

While notorious taxi boss Vusi “Khekhe” Mathibela and his three co-accused – Sipho Patrick Hudla, Robert Mutapa and Bonginkosi Khumalo – were each sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder last year, Bozwana’s family reportedly continue to question who ordered the hit on him.

READ | Mbalula was exercising at time of Bozwana murder, advocate says in court bid to gag Mda

After her first tweet about Bozwana’s murder, Mda later posted: “Imagine doubting what Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said because Fikile Mbalula cast doubt on him. Mbalula has not yet explained why was he seen in Sandton with the occupants of the car that followed Wandile Bozwana, who was then shot and killed at Menlyn in 2015.”

Baqwa has now ordered Mda to remove these statements “within 24 hours, from all her social media platforms, including [her] Twitter accounts” and “within 24 hours, to publish a notice on all her social media platforms, on which the statements had been published, and is directed to unconditionally retract and apologise for the allegations made about [Mbalula] in the statements”.

Baqwa has also granted a punitive costs order against Mda.

Mda’s lawyer, Eric Mabuza, told News24 she intended appealling the ruling. Mda has stressed that she based her tweets on news articles that Mbalula never challenged.