Dr Specioza Wandira Kazibwe prayed for Shs600 million. Judge Stephen Musota awarded her Shs200 million. Andrew Mwenda will pay. And the Independent magazine must delete all ‘libelous’ articles about Dr Kazibwe from its website.
That’s the price for an article published by Mwenda’s Independent magazine in April 2010 that Judge Musota, of the Civil Division of the High Court, ruled had defamed Dr Kazibwe and injured her reputation.
In the ruling on the High Court civil case number 105 of 2010, Judge Musota awarded the former vice president Shs150 million as general damages and another Shs50 million as exemplary damages, permanent injunction restraining the magazine from future publication of defamatory articles about her person as well as removal of all libelous articles from the Independent website.
It’s the kind of ruling that press freedom advocates, which ironically was Mwenda’s forte in the yesteryear, will protest against given the controversies that have dogged Dr Kazibwe’s life while she still held public office.
The former VP, whose name will forever be pasted alongside a controversial valley dams construction in Karamoja that never was, dragged the Independent Publications Limited to court, claiming the article it had published had defamed her person.
The said article was published in the magazine issue number 105 on April 28, 2010. The article in question carried a story under headline, “Kazibwe squanders Sacco’s Shs300 million leaving Busoga region poor.
