Businessman wants court to stop Joe Thomas

BASHI LETSIDIDI
Correspondent | Monday June 24, 2013 00:00

The promoter, Kgosietsile Mariri of BP Implements, has applied to the High Court alleging that the sponsors Kgalagadi Breweries Limited, 'stole' the idea from him. However KBL's defense is that Mariri cannot claim any exclusive rights over the singer.

Mariri claims that he met Thomas at one of his shows in Mzanzi in 2011. He got to meet the artist after the show and one of the annexures before court is a picture of the two men shaking hands at the Sandton Convention Centre as they pose for a picture.He would later put together a 48-page proposal for a Joe Thomas show in Botswana and shopped it to KBL.

According to the proposal, the whole project was to cost P1.5 million with Joe pocketing $65,000 (P430,000) and P300,000 going towards travel and accommodation expenses. In April 2012, Mariri handed the proposal to a KBL employee called Kopano Pontsho who promised to give him feedback.

'In the meantime, I had opened communication with Kedar Massenburg, Thomas' manager in the United States who was negotiating on behalf of Thomas to have the show hosted in Gaborone. There was an exchange of email communication between myself and Massenburg,' Mariri says in his founding affidavit. He says that KBL's response never came and when he enquired, Pontsho told him that they had received a similar proposal from another promoter. He was never given any more details about this other promoter, he says. Pontsho then asked for Massenburg's contact details, he obliged and not suspecting anything could be amiss, also gave the American Pontsho's number.Then the shock. 'In May this year I was shocked to discover that the respondent was advertising the same show that I had proposed featuring Thomas to be staged on July 6th, 2013 at the Gaborone International Convention Centre.?

Elaborating on the latter a few sentences later, Mariri asserts that KBL 'was not being truthful when it alleged that it had received a similar proposal from another company. No such promoter exists and none appears in any of the adverts for the music show.'On account of KBL's actions being 'wrongful, unlawful and outright fraudulent' and to prevent a situation in which the company benefits from 'stealing' its idea and using it to 'reap financial benefits' for itself, BP Implements wants the court to issue an order cancelling the show.

The full extent of the theft, as Mariri describes it in his affidavit, took this form: 'The respondent has used the same banner, the same colour and the same logo contained in the applicant?s proposal. 'The respondent has invited the same artist, Joe Thomas, covered by my proposal to the respondent.' Other than the theft, BP Investments also charges that KBL is in breach of confidentiality because the idea of the show was passed to it in confidence.