JUDGMENT
2025/198872_ 29042026 / bs
2
Prior restraints on expression are not easily granted.
G enerally speaking, a person must tolerate expression they
do not like, even if they honestly believe it to be defamatory
or otherwise injurious , unless they can show that
irreparable loss – loss of the kind that would not be
compensated for in an action for damages – will be cause d
unless the expression is interdicted. Even then, significant
weight must be attached to the exercise of the speaker or
publisher’s rights to free expression under section 16 of the
Constitution, 1996. A prior restraint should only be granted 10
if it would, on all the facts, embody a justifiable limitation
on that constitutional right.
In this matter, no such case is made out. The closest
the applicants come to such a case is in their claim of
extortion. But, on closer examination, the claim of extortion
outlined on the applicants’ papers is merely that the first
respondent will embark upon what is referred to as a “media
campaign” against the applicants unless money is paid to
the first respondent that the applicants appear to accept the
first respondent genuinely believes she is owed. That is
20
plainly not extortion.
Except in the case of a clearly unlawful threat, it will
not normally be inferred that a person wishes to extort
money from another person who genuinely owes them an
obligation to pay it. The first respondent clearly believes
JUDGMENT
2025/198872_ 29042026 / bs
3
that the applicants are under payment obligation s towards
her. The threat she makes is not to embarrass them unless
they pay her money to which she would not otherwise be
entitled . The threat is to blow the whistle on what she
genuinely believes to be their turpitude in failing to pay her
what she is owed.
I express no view on whether the first respondent
really is owed the payments she says are due to her. I say
only that the genuine belief that they are owed excludes the
possibility that her threats to embarrass the applicants
10
could be extortionate. The cause of any such payments
would, at least in the first respondent’s mind, be the
obligation allegedly owed to her, not any illegitimate
coercion on her part. In general, a threat to embarrass
someone into complying with their legal obligations cannot
be extortionate.
Accordingly, the intent to unlawfully extract money by
coercion is absent , and so must be any suggestion that the
first respondent has committed or intends to commit an act
of extortion.
20
It follows that, even on the applicants’ version, no
case of irreparable harm has been established, the matter
is not urgent, and it must be struck from the roll.
A judgment and order to that effect was given orally
in court (“ ex tempore ”) immediately upon the completion of
JUDGMENT
2025/198872_ 29042026 / bs
4
argument in this case , on 24 October 2025. My clerk
ordered a transcript of the judgment on the same day.
Despite regular attempts to follow up with the court
transcribers, made both by my office and the first
respondent and her legal representatives, the transcript of
my judgment was not produced until 8 May 2026, some six
and a half months later. When the transcript came, it was
almost unusable. Large parts of the recording were said to
have been inaudible, but that assertion was undercut by
obvious mistranscriptions . Words appeared which made no
10
sense in the context of the rest of the transcription, and
which any reasonable transcriber must have known could
not have been correct, even on the portions of the transcript
the transcribe r accepted were audible.
In light of all this , I was left to wonder whether the
recording really was inaudible, or whether the transcriber
had not captured the gist of my decision for some other
reason. I asked that a recording of the judgment be
provided. That request, too, appears to have fallen on deaf
ears. Two weeks after it was made, nothing had been
20
produced.
Accordingly, I reconstructed this judgment from the
useable portions of the transcript, from memory, and from
the notes I took at the hearing. While this is far from ideal,
the circumstances I have set out left no other course of
JUDGMENT
2025/198872_ 29042026 / bs
5
action reasonably available to me.
T his court’s Judges must process an extremely high
volume of work . In the average working week, the average
Judge is called upon to make dozens of reasoned decisions,
and to read and process thousands of pages of documents.
The number of cases Judges are expected to process
increases every year. The number of Judges available to
process those matters remains the same.
Judgments ex tempore are indispensable tools in
moving through the work assigned to us . They allow us, in
10
straightforward cases, to give the parties a decision
immediately at the end of argument, knowing that our
reasons for the decision will be promptly transcribed and
made available to the parties as soon as possible.
In this case, though, those advantages have not been
realised, for reasons which have not been explained. The
delay in producing the transcribed judgment, the extremely
poor quality of the transcription when it was produced, and
the failure to provide me with the rele vant recording are all
unacceptable. These failings have prejudiced the parties.
20
They have hampered my ability to provide the parties with
the service they are entitled to expect.
If repeated, such failings risk bringing the judiciary
into disrepute. I trust that these observations will be
brought to the attention of those whose responsibility it is to