Musa Khawula Ordered By Court To Pay Celebrity Photographer R500 000
Celebrity photographer Dumani Khuzwayo won a lawsuit against blogger Musa Khawula. The Johannesburg High Court Judge, Jordaan, ruled in favor of Khuzwayo and ordered Khawula to pay R500,000 in damages.
Khuzwayo sued Khawula for defamation after he accused Khuzwayo of being part of a group of young men who were being prostituted by older men. In a tweet back in January, Musa said that Khuzwayo was being paid by a pimp in Gauteng province to sleep with older men.
Khawula tweeted that Khuzwayo was hired by a Gauteng pimp for unprotected sex with elderly men and insinuated that Khuzwayo was HIV-positive. In his Tweet, Musa Khawula said:
He is going to get Aids very quickly because nobody wants to use rubber ever that’s given.
Musa Khawula to pay R500 000 to Khuzwayo for defamation
Khuzwayo argued that the tweet was defamatory and intended to damage his reputation. The Tweet was shared to all of Musa Khawula’s 183 000 Twitter followers which further proved that he was aiming at damaging the photographer’s reputation and work.
The court agreed with Khuzwayo and ordered Khawula to pay damages and apologize on his social media platforms. Khawula was also ordered to retract his statements, delete any related tweets, and provide a written undertaking not to make further false, defamatory, or hurtful remarks about Dumani.
In the verdict, there was a statement that said:
Having read the documents filed of record, heard evidence and submissions by counsel, and having considered the matter, the following order is made, “It is ordered that the respondent pay the sum of R500 000.00 to the applicant, interest on the aforesaid sum of R500 000.00 at the rate of 9.75% per annum a tempore mora until date of payment in full; the respondent issue public apology and unconditional retraction in writing and published on the respondent’s various social media platforms in which the respondent published the said utterances.
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