Leepile the maverick returns
Pamela Dube | Friday April 4, 2014 14:23
He is still the hyper, fast-talking, walk-running and hearty laughing Tony with no care in the world. But up until recently, the burning fire in his eyes had dimmed. For more than a decade, he had fought one court battle after another, not of criminal but of somewhat constitutional nature. Victory has come home at last!
Last week Thursday, at the High Court of Gaborone, Leepile, the maverick, won a marathon defamation lawsuit instituted by senior High Court Judge Mphaphi Phumaphi. It was a battle that started 13 years ago, at the height of the tribalism tensions that shook the core of the Botswana society. The lawsuit hinged on the published research draft paper Leepile had sent to a few friends to critique but ended being circulated in the ‘enemy’ camp and published in the local weekly tabloid The Voice. Phumaphi had argued that the article The Voice had published defamed him, and that Leepile as the author should be held responsible.
But Leepile maintained in public then and in court, and still says; “I have not defamed anyone.”
Leepile argues that, “the litmus test of defamation is publication. Plaintiff did not even succeed in crossing that first hurdle of the test. I have a very good sense of right and wrong. I have been wronged, vilified and insulted.”
When Justice Phumaphi first went to court, he had had denied any association with Society for the Protection of Ikalanga Language (SPIL), Leepile notes. “But on cross examination he admitted that he was its sponsor, or alternatively, helped fund raise for the movement. Plaintiff had denied knowledge that there was a public debate on the ethnicity matter during the constitutional debates. Yet he was an active participant in the process like me and many other Batswana. The Judge ruled back in 2009, on the basis of evidence I submitted, that there was indeed a public debate.”
There is a context to the statements in the draft, insists Leepile. The document, titled ‘Ethnic Composition’ was a response to a published document by the exponents of ‘Kalangadom’. He explains that the authors had argued that the Tswana speaking polity was subjugating the Kalanga population, denying them access to land, jobs and other economic privileges.
“Present day Botswana was to be re-named ‘Butwa’ after the ‘Batwa’, the ostensible forebears of the Kalanga. As should be clear from the large body of evidential material I submitted to the Court, this thing had its intellectual spokespersons, the likes of Richard Werbner, for instance.
“I obviously thought this was offensive a divisive stuff. I had been out of the country for a few years and had just come back. To my surprise, our country was suddenly populated by the ‘Batswana’ and the ‘Batswana Other’. In fact, I had gone on record and made a submission to the Balopi Commission, countering this type of hogwash. If that made me a ‘tribalist’ or ‘politician’ let it be.”
But while these discussions were in the public domain, the document he drafted and that ended being published and getting him to here 13 years later, was never meant for public consumption.
“I have always maintained that my draft was not for publication, and had considered it stolen and circulated without my permission. I had neither consented nor handed it to The Voice newspaper.”
The Voice does not dispute that fact. This week the newspaper publisher Beata Kasale said the author did not grant them the paper nor ask them to publish it. “We have said that even in our submission in the court papers,” she said.
What The Voice refused to mention, in court and to this date, is the source of the document. But the ever vigilant and investigative Leepile made it his mission to find out. He told the court, and it was confirmed in the documentation and by form of testimony by the Dikgang Publishing Company managing director, Titus Mbuya, that the draft was stolen, by someone he won’t say publicly, before circulation.
He says way back in 2001 the pressure group, the SPIL, had claimed to have access to it. Its spokesperson, Batshane Ndaba, “had boasted in an unpublished document, later to become a chapter in the book by the UB professor Richard Nyamjoh, that if SPIL had wished, they would have been the first to publish it. How brazen!”
Leepile further explains that in the course of the trial he learnt that it was Sanjie Monageng, the former magistrate and at the time, Secretary of the Law Society and now with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, who gave the document to Dr Jeff Ramsay.
Ramsay confirmed the fact this week. He said back then, they had been on a bus trip to South Africa on a National Broadcasting Board fact-finding mission, and there was “a buzz about this paper Leepile had written. I think I must have been the only one who did not know about it. Then Sanjie offered to give it to me.”
A little later she did, he said, and he later handed it over to Kasale. Ramsay says while he had initial misgivings about passing on the document because of a strained relationship with the author at the time, “and especially because I had heard Leepile was not happy that it was in circulation, it was already news all over town.”
Ramsay says he mentioned all these in his deposition in court, but was never called to testify. The reason he was not, says Leepile, was because Phumaphi’s lawyers had objected to his introducing new witnesses late in the case despite the earlier verbal agreement to that fact in the Judges’ chambers. He decided not to fight that aspect because it would have added to mounting legal costs and time.
While he is now content with how the trial ended, he is in wonder as to the intention of the whole thing.
“Towards the end of the trial I got to know the name of the person who stole the paper from Mbuya’s office. This was a scam, calculated to either stop me from producing a report or to silence me. I voluntarily decided not to continue with the work once the draft had been leaked, in part because I did not wish to be part of the polarisation but also because I realised during Balopi Commission that the country needed to heal,” he tells Mmegi.
While Justice Singh Walia, found Leepile not liable to publication of his document, he judged the document defamatory and came short of calling the author a tribalist.
“On close scrutiny, the document reveals the fifth defendant’s undisguised dislike of the Kalanga. Not only that, he also comes across as a brazen jingoist in the protection and advancement of the interests of the Tswana speaking people,” says Walia in his judgment.
To this, Leepile retorts, “You think I care? He (Justice Walia) actually got carried away, calling me a jingoist and said I made political statements. He should keep his emotions to himself. The exchanges in Court were occasionally volatile and tempers flared.”
He further reminds that, “I had reason to believe that he was too close to the plaintiff, and I had, at some point, asked him to recuse himself from the case. He refused and slapped me with costs. I applied for leave to appeal to get him removed, but he was steadfast in his refusal, once again slapping me with costs. I then went straight to the Appeals Court to seek relief, which delayed the case by two years.”
Over this period, Leepile had been faced with other professional and legal headaches. When the ‘tribal’ lawsuit started, it was at the height of setting up Botswana’s first and premier Setswana language newspaper, Mokgosi. It was not without controversies. Fueled by polarised tribal tensions of the time and drained of resources, three years into business the newspaper collapsed end of 2006.
The biggest test for Leepile and his friends were the battles for control and ownership of the Dikgang Publishing Company newspaper stables.
“Buying back Mmegi was one of my biggest challenges in recent years.”
He explains that in 2007 he set out to buy out the British owner who held a minority (49%) stake in the Guardian newspaper. The Mmegi Trust owned the balance. “The trust was not in position to buy out the shareholder and there was a real risk that an outsider could come in. To my surprise, my director colleagues became very hostile. They came with every trick to scupper the deal. Their main interest was not in investing, but controlling the company. They were also accountable to themselves and not the shareholders.”
Two years into the battle zone, Leepile managed to get the shareholders, his opponents, from directorship positions. “They sued for peace. But it turns out they wanted us to lower our guard.”
Then in 2011, together with Titus Mbuya, they decided on taking a majority shareholding in the Mmegi Investment Holdings. “We met stiff resistance along the way, but we were never perturbed. There was never any doubt in our minds that we were right.”
Finally in December 2013, the duo won, and now with the defamation lawsuit behind him, Leepile is back, and a happy man. There is a spring in his step!
But then, 13 years, three major court battles, one wonders how he managed to survive, not swimming in millions of Pula? “The justice system is skewed towards the rich and powerful. People throw away cases not because they are necessarily wrong, but often for lack of financial resources and other support systems.”
Networking is key, he reasons.
“I am particularly indebted to Lerumo Mogobe who introduced me to his partner Advocate Efanalluah Khan some years ago. They believed my story from day one and resolved to defend me, rain or sunshine. “I have built a very strong bond with Khan over the years. It gave me some comfort that they were not transactional lawyers. I paid them on terms.”
Support of family and friends kept him going. He cites specifically his brother Sekano, sister Masego and her husband Mike whom he says were the bedrock of support. So were his friends Sebusang Sebusang, Modirwa Kekwaletse, Boitshoko Maphage, Moshe Lekaukau and Titus Mbuya.
“They showed loyalty and gave me comfort when I was at my lowest. I was aware I was dealing with vested and organised interests, so I marshalled the support of international media and human rights networks, MISA and the Media Legal Defence Assistance Fund being the lead organisations on that front. The financial support they provided was token, but the solidarity and publicity they gave to the case, was irreplaceable.”
But for Leepile, it could be said it is sheer love for life that kept him going. There were times he admits he was so down that even his long suffering family couldn’t pull him out.
“Life is full of challenges, and I must say love challenges. I am a crab (Cancerian), always testing new frontiers. I am a consummate networker and truly love development work, farming being one of my passions. But I will always be a media person. It is the field around which I anchor all my other work.”
Leepile is a fighter. He is not known to back off easily. “You have to fight for your beliefs and what you worked for if you want to be taken seriously by the public. You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself. Patrick van Rensburg played a big part in my professional and adult life. We had a father-son relationship. We had our ‘fights’ but in the end we always agreed to disagree. One of the things he taught me when he handed me over the editorship of Mmegi of was that ‘Son, you should never allow people to touch you anywhere, because if you do, they will start touching you everywhere’. I live by that credo. If I am wrong, I will be the first to admit. But if I am not, I will hold my line, no matter how long it takes.”
Marrying right and putting family first is key to survival. “I have been married to the girl next door, Gosetsemang ‘Gose’ Bosanako, for 24 years. She is an educationist and quality control expert in education.”
They have three children, a boy and two girls. Ditso Lopang is in media marketing. Laone Banusi wants to be a “shrink” and is currently working overseas. Mmakeng Egorogile is studying to be a lawyer at the University of Botswana.
“Gose thinks I pay more attention to other people than her! My children are very dear to me. I would like them to grow up to become independent. As a parent, the best thing I can give them is an education. In my own quiet way, I want them to know that life is not a ride; that they should not take anything for granted and that no one owes them anything.”