Mpho Letsoalo from the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has been found guilty of insulting Tshekiso during a court case by saying that the lawyer "suffers from verbal diarrhoea and he is myopic". Justice Moses Chinhengo of the Francistown High Court ruled that it was an aggression upon Letsoalo to state such words to him.
"It is subjecting him to offensive and degrading treatment and it exposes him to ill-will, ridicule and contempt," Chinhengo said. "The utterances by the respondent constituted an insult to the plaintiff," he added. The judge explained that the word 'myopic' on its own may not be an insult because it may be understood by reasonable men to mean more than 'shortsighted'. But when it is uttered soon after the words, 'he suffers from verbal diarrhoea' it assumes an insulting character from the context in which it is used. "The various meanings of the words 'verbal diarrhoea' when used about someone's statement are far from complementary.
And the metaphorical sense in which they are used does not diminish their insulting character," the judge stated. Any ordinary and reasonable person would find the words used metaphorically as they were, to be an insult, he asserted. "Counsel does not enjoy complete immunity from suit or liability for an insult uttered in the course of judicial proceedings," Chinhengo stated in response to Letsoalo's claim that the words were used on a privileged occasion. The judge quoted from Innes CJ who once said that: "If courts of law do not intervene effectively in cases of this kind, one of two results will follow - either one man will avenge himself for an insult to himself by insulting the other or else he will take the law into his own hands.
