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Author Jackie Phamotse will know her fate next month in the defamation case brought to court by former beauty queen Basetana Kumalo after both lawyers delivered their heads of arguments in the Randburg Magistrates' Court on Tuesday.
Judgment will be handed down on August 8.
State prosecutor Yusuf Baba argued that the constitutional rights to dignity and privacy of former Miss SA were infringed when Phamotse allegedly tweeted in 2018 that there was a sex video involving Kumalo and her husband Romeo with a celebrity boy.
The tweet read: “Just overheard a painful conversation, a female TV mogul pleading with one of my girls to not share videos of her drunk and her husband [sic] rimming a celebrity boy!!!!!!!!! What the hell!!!! What kind of marriages do we have now!!! I have asked to see this video.”
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Phamotse also faces two counts of crimen injuria and Baba was adamant in his closing arguments that the court should find her guilty. “Many years down the line, Miss Phamotse never sought to correct publicly that she was not talking about the Kumalos. The reason that they sought justice in this court is that Miss Phamotse was the main instigator and positioned herself as the person that knows dark secrets,” said Baba.
He said Phamotse's tweet left a long-lasting impairment to the dignity of the Kumalos and her comments "are digitally imprinted and cannot be removed".
He added:
However, Phamotse’s lawyer Mpho Matodzi, said the case made out by the state had no merit as she did not identify the Kumalos by name in the alleged tweet.
Matodzi further argued that the name “mogul” did not exclusively belong to the former beauty queen and it could have been anyone in the entertainment circles.
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“We therefore submit that the state failed to prove its case beyond any reasonable doubt on all the four counts against the accused person… the state led witness in this matter being Mr Romeo Kumalo and Mrs Basetsana Kumalo and no other witnesses were called. It is common cause that both witnesses in the case are husband and wife and we submit that their testimony should be approached with maximum caution. They are likely to have discussed the case together and the merits of the case even after numerous postponements,” he said.
