Yet Another Bruising Court Loss For Jacob Zuma And Mk Party

Former President Jacob Zuma and his uMkhonto weSizwe MK Party have lost their court bid to stop the South African Broadcasting Corporation SABC using the term government of national unity GNU.

The Johannesburg high court dismissed their application with costs on Friday 31 January, representing yet another loss for them.

Zuma and MK Party had argued that the term government of national unity misrepresents the current government because some parties are not included in the GNU, which therefore does not espouse unity.

They therefore argued that the SABCs use of the term amounted to either deliberate disinformation or unintentional misinformation, both of which infringed on Section 16 of the Constitution which protects the freedom of expression.

However, Judge Fisher J disagreed with their contention, ruling that the matter does not implicate Section 16 in any manner or form. He added, At best for the applicants the complaint devolves into one which is to the effect that the use of the term is inaccurate.

Fisher added that the term GNU is based on political considerations of the parties involved and is not legally objectionable. He gave some interesting examples to drive his point home:

It could equally be argued that the second applicants MK Party use of its own name is evocative of the struggle of the ANC and thus that it attempts to appropriate those laurels that the Democratic Alliance is not truly democratic that the African National Congress is neither National nor African in the true sense that the Communist Party does not adhere to the ideals of Marxist theory. I could go on, but the point is made, he stated.

It is not the remit of the court to enter into political debate as to the names that players in the political field adopt to brand themselves. What is Democratic? What is National? What represents unity?

The Judge described the application as mischievous because it seeks to have the courts enter these idealistic debates which is neither its place nor, more formally put, its sphere of jurisdiction.

The Constitution does not accord to persons the right to hear only information which is considered objectively accurate. Thus, Constitutional rights are not implicated and the claim under section 172 must fail, he ruled.