Facebook statements accusing two Cabinet ministers of
poisoning Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa have backfired for businessman Mr
Energy Mutodi after the pair slapped him with a $40 000 defamation lawsuit.
The high-profile lawsuit was filed at the High Court last
Friday. Defence Minister Dr Sydney Sekeramayi and Minister of Health and Child
Care Dr David Parirenyatwa are claiming $20 000 each from Mr Mutodi as
defamation damages.
Mr Mutodi allegedly posted on his Facebook wall an article
titled “TWO MINISTERS TOP SUSPECTS IN ED POISON CASE” which circulated
countrywide and beyond the borders. The article was posted around August 25
this year.
The article, according to the ministers, put them in bad
light as it insinuated that they gave VP Mnangagwa samosa, sandwiches and
grapes that were laced with poison. The food, according to the online report,
came from Minister Sekeramayi’s home.
Through their lawyers Machingura Legal Practitioners, the
two ministers sued Mr Mutodi for defamation. According to the plaintiffs’
declaration, the meaning and implications of the article were false and
wrongful with an effect of portraying the two as murderers as opposed to
medical doctors who should be saving lives.
The two stated in the declaration that the post wrongly
made people think that they conspired to poison the VP and that the poisoning
was pre-meditated. The duo also argued that the article damaged their
reputation as it insinuated that they abused their specialist knowledge and
expertise as medical doctors to harm the VP.
It was also stated in the declaration that the article
wrongly insinuated that the two ministers “conspired to fabricate false
allegations that the Honourable VP had been poisoned at a rally by ice cream from
Gushungo Dairy and further that plaintiffs made these false allegations to
conceal and cover up their plot”.
The lawyers said: “The post was made and published with
intention to defame plaintiffs and to injure their respective reputations. As a
result of the defamation, plaintiffs have been individually damaged in their
reputation and have respectively suffered damages in the sum of $20 000 each,”
reads the declaration.
The lawyers indicated that the ministers have tried to
recover the damages outside court with no success, hence the institution of the
court action. The pair is seeking an order for payment of damages with costs.
Mr Mutodi is yet to respond to the claim. Herald
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