Former top cop Lt-Gen Khomotso Phahlane sued the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) for R350 000 and won, again.
Popcru had accused him of corruption, pointing to stolen drugs and doctored stats. The impugned press release, issued by Popcru and its then-general secretary, Matsemela Matsemela, accused Phahlane, then a top boss at the Forensic Science Laboratory, of a stunning catalogue of filth.
This included concealing or doctoring crime statistics to make his command look good; declining to act against an officer who stole drugs with a street value of a staggering R500-million; colluding with the same officer over a rhino horn possession charge; sabotaging a fraud case against a bogus doctor; and letting a perpetrator of sexual harassment off scot-free.
Union sued for defamation
Phahlane sued Popcru and its leaders for defamation, arguing that the statement had injured his “persona”, and walked away R350 000 richer.
In the Gauteng High Court, the battle was not over whether the allegations were true, but whether they were hurtful.
The appellants, the Popcru leaders, put up a defence that the contents were “true and fair in the circumstances and for the public benefit”.
But they closed their case without testifying. They admitted issuing the statement but offered no evidence to prove its veracity. It was a catastrophic legal miscalculation.
The late Judge Ramarumo Monama, in the initial judgment in 2017, found the statement was unequivocally defamatory and that it clearly referred to Phahlane. With the defence of truth left unproven, the path was clear.
Monama slammed the union with a R350 000 damages award, plus interest, and ordered them to publish a humiliating apology and retraction.
Popcru tried to appeal, arguing the “reasonable reader” wouldn’t have thought Phahlane did anything wrong. They also complained that the damages were excessive, citing older, settled cases.
Popcru hit with punitive costs
However, the full bench of the high court, consisting of Justices Selemeng Mokose, Takalane Raulinga, and Soraya Hassim, remained unyielding.
On Wednesday they upheld the award and hammered the union with punitive costs—on the attorney-client scale—for the way they had dragged out the litigation for over seven years.
“The appellants merely admitted that they had made the statement and then closed their case,” the judgment noted. It was a self-inflicted wound that sealed their fate.
The union, which positioned itself as the voice of the rank and file against alleged corruption at the top, has been left with a massive legal bill, estimated to be over a million, and a mandate to publicly apologise to the very man they accused of betraying the badge.
