Hamata to pay for defamation

WEEKLY newspaper editor Max Hamata and a reporter formerly attached to his publication are to pay businessman Desmond Amunyela N$50 000 as part of a settlement reached in a defamation case in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

The case – in which Amunyela sued Confidénte editor Hamata, reporter Alna Dall, and a property developer, Danie Venter, for N$500 000 based on a claim that defamatory statements about him had been published in Confidénte in March 2012 – was settled through an agreement that Acting Judge Collins Parker made an order of the court.

In terms of the settlement agreement, it was agreed that Hamata and Dall would pay Amunyela an amount of N$50 000 within a period of three months. They must also pay Amunyela N$20 000 within two months as a contribution towards his legal costs, while Amunyela must in turn pay N$10 000 to Venter before the end of March as a contribution towards his legal costs.

In addition to that, Hamata and Dall un- dertook to “unconditionally apologise” to Amunyela by publishing a retraction of the article over which Amunyela sued them on the front page of the next edition of Confi- dénte. They agreed to apologise to him for suggesting and implying that Amunyela had “raked in” N$2,5 million from Venter as a result of alleged extortion.

In the article it was claimed that Amunyela, an executive director of Paragon Investment Holdings, was under investigation from the Anti-Corruption Commission in connec- tion with a business deal around a piece of land on which an apartment complex was developed by Venter. It was claimed in the article that Amunyela solicited payments totalling N$2,5 million from Venter in exchange for influencing the City of Windhoek to approve the property development.

In the claim he lodged against Hamata, Dall and Venter, Amunyela complained that the article suggested that he was an extortionist, corrupt, had been involved in underhanded dealing in connection with the property referred to in the article, and had corruptly influenced the City of Windhoek and committed extortion against Venter.

The Windhoek City Council agreed in July 2006 to sell a plot of land, Erf 1098 in Olympia, to Uukumwe Consortium, in which Amunyela and his business partner, Lazarus Jacobs, had a stake, at a price of N$3,6 million.

Documents filed at the High Court show that a development agreement was concluded between Uukumwe Consortium, represented by Amunyela, and Unibuild Close Corporation, represented by Venter, in November 2006. In terms of that agreement Unibuild was appointed as the contractor to develop an apartment complex on the property.

Unibuild agreed to pay a “joining fee” of N$400 000 to Uukumwe, and to also share the profits from the project with Uukumwe at the completion of the project. It was agreed that a minimum of N$1,4 million in shared profits was to be paid to Uukumwe.

The payment that is to be made to Amu- nyela in terms of the settlement agreement is the second setback in a defamation case to come Hamata’s way in less than three weeks. On 23 January, Acting Judge Parker ordered Trustco Group International, which owns the weekly Informanté, Hamata, who is a former editor of the latter, and the publication’s former printers to pay damages of N$60 000 to Cabinet member Erkki Nghimtina in connection with an article published in a July 2010 edition of Informanté.

Acting Judge Parker found that the article, in which it was claimed that Nghimtina had misused his former position as minister of mines and energy to get his mother-in-law’s house connected to the rural electricity grid, was defamatory.

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