Kaya FM breakfast show host Dineo Ranaka is challenging her estranged husband’s decision to file a half-a-million defamation lawsuit in the high court in Johannesburg.
In the lawsuit, Klaas James Pesha says the media personality falsely accused him of beating her up in one of their domestic violence tiffs. This, according to Pesha, Ranaka posted on her WhatsApp statuses.
In an amended plea filed on November 11 2022, Ranaka argues that the high court which Pesha wants to preside over the case does not have the jurisdiction to hear the case, saying she posted the statuses when she was in the Western Cape, and not in Gauteng.
A plea, which we have seen, reads: “In so far as paragraph three that the whole cause [of] action arose within the area of jurisdiction of the above honourable court, the defendant alleges that the WhatsApp statuses, on which the plaintiff bases its cause of action, were posted within the jurisdiction of the Western Cape High Court, as the defendant was in Cape Town at the time of posting the alleged defamatory statements. [They] were not published within the area of jurisdiction of the above honourable court.”
The storm between the former lovebirds, who are in a process of divorce, started brewing when Ranaka posted on her WhatsApp statuses and also alleged in a podcast that Pesha had assaulted her at their Tshwane matrimonial home in 2021.
Ranaka said the incident happened seven months after they had tied the knot. She further said she immediately dumped Pesha as she could not stand being with a perpetrator of gender-based violence.
“I would rather have a divorce decree that [sic] a premature death certificate. I cannot believe I married a man who has the full capability of killing me and making my death look like it’s my own doing,” she said at the time.
In the court papers Pesha, a businessman and engineer, pours cold water over Ranaka’s allegations and says he wants her to not only pay her half a million for defaming him, but also retract the allegations and unconditionally apologise to him.
He says he and Ranaka’s legion of fans, friends and family who were on her contact lists when she posted the messages understood the statements to mean that he was an abuser.
The statements or statuses, he further says, are false, malicious and defamatory, and impugned his character, reputation and dignity.
He further says Ranaka made the statements maliciously, knowing full well that they were false, because he was never arrested and charged for assaulting her.
Upon seeing the statements, he says, his lawyers wrote a letter of demand to Ranaka on October 14 2021 instructing her to retract them and apologise to him, but she refused. This, he says, left him with no choice but to approach the court for relief.
In the plea, Ranaka insists that Pesha assaulted her, and says she wanted to open a case of assault against him but he threatened to press a counter charge.
“Upon the SAPS [the police] wanting to arrest the plaintiff, the plaintiff threatened to lay a criminal charge against the defendant in retaliation, with the effect that the defendant would be arrested and be prevented from caring for the parties’ small baby,” reads the plea.
Speaking on the podcast, the former YFM and Metro FM presenter reiterated the claims, saying when Pesha was assaulting her, she was carrying their three-month-old baby, and alleged that she bit him on his arm in self-defence.
Ranaka has asked the court to dismiss Pesha’s case with costs.
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