Malema may have to pay up
2012-04-08 15:15
Carien du Plessis, City Press
Johannesburg - Embattled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and two of his fellow leaders are being hauled to court by Western Cape Premier Helen Zille in a R1.4m defamation suit.
Zille will on Tuesday ask the court to compel Malema, league spokesperson Floyd Shivambu, and Cape Town councillor and league member Andile Lili to file papers in the case against them – or pay up.
Zille brought the case against them almost two years ago after they failed to apologise for hurling insults at her during and after the 2009 general elections campaign.
They called her a “racist girl” who appointed an “all male cabinet of useless people, the majority of whom are her boyfriends and concubines so that she can continue to sleep around with them”.
This followed Zille’s criticism of Jacob Zuma’s private life and polygamous relationships.
Many of the insults to which Zille took exception were made by the league in defence of Zuma.
Moral values
Zille argues that the statements were intended to mean she is a person of disreputable moral values, and guilty of conduct unbecoming to acceptable norms of personal behaviour, as well as a racist.
The papers also reveal that the league leaders appointed Advocate Michael Hulley, who is also Zuma’s lawyer and who was recently appointed as a part-time presidential legal adviser.
Hulley, however, withdrew on January 19 this year, about two weeks before the ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeal upheld the finding that Malema was guilty of sowing division in the party.
Zille’s lawyer, Amanda Torr, says in an affidavit filed at the Western Cape High Court, where the case will be heard, that it has been difficult serving papers on the league leaders since Hulley withdrew.
Torr said she had to trace their addresses via company searches, and also tried to serve a letter on Malema at Luthuli House last month.
But, she said, the security guard “refused to acknowledge receipt of (the letter) in writing, as they advised that the defendants were suspended and their secretaries were no longer there”.
