MISA Namibia is calling on all media to continue to tell the truth without fear or favour, and to ensure they meet the highest standards in reporting and coverage.

This comes after a recent article in Informante entitled “Conradie bows out of Informante lawsuit”. The article states that prominent Windhoek lawyer Dirk Conradie withdrew his action in a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper, just a month after two key High Court judgments redefined the course of defamation litigation to uphold press freedom.

This is the second withdrawal of charges where a newspaper was sued for N$ 3.5 million which could either have crippled or shut down the newspaper because of his high standing in society. This follows last years' withdrawal by Former President Sam Nujoma’s defamation case against the Namibian newspaper for N$ 5 million.

In a similar case in December 2008, Deputy Minister of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture, Pohamba Shifeta claimed that two stories published in New Era on June 8 and 9 2006 defamed him. He sued the newspaper for N$ 500 000.

However, in a judgment handed down in the High Court on December 5, 2008, Judge Collins Parker ruled that one of the articles was indeed damaging to Shifeta’s reputation, but ordered the newspaper to pay Shifeta only N$ 50 000 for the defamation he claimed to have suffered.

The judgment represents a landmark in the evolution of the law on defamation in a media context in Namibia. Judge Parker’s decision is the first in which a Namibian court has expressly declared that the legal doctrine of strict liability – in which the media was held strictly liable for the publication of any false defamatory allegations – should be discarded in favour of an approach focusing more on the constitutional right to free speech that has been the law in South Africa since 1998.

In terms of that approach, the publication of false and defamatory allegations in the media would not be regarded as unlawful if it is found, considering all the circumstances of a matter, that the publication of the claims was reasonable in the particular way it was done and at that particular time.

National Director of MISA Namibia, Mathew Haikali is encouraging the media not to be intimidated. “Only through investigative reporting can our media grow especially in covering elections, corruption and development,” he said.

Mathew Haikali
National Director
MISA Namibia
Tel: 061 236069
Fax: 061 236054
Email: director@misanamibia.org

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