Joffe won’t back down despite R1,3 million ‘settlement’

JACK MILNER

However, according to Joffe there is no settlement, certainly not on his side. 

Last week Hollard Insurance, who is providing insurance cover for Joffe, proposed a settlement whereby Joffe would pay Sascoc R1,3 million. SASCOC agreed to the terms of the offer.

The “war” between them goes back a number of years and in July 2013 SASCOC filed a defamation claim against the sports journalist. They claimed that a number of articles posted on-line by Joffe and some of his tweets concerning the organisation and the directors, were “unjustified and defamatory”.

Two years later Joffe responded, but rather than provide proof of his articles and tweets, he put out a list of technical objections, 131 of them, to SASCOC’s claim.

The court dismissed all of them, with costs. At the time High Court Judge J Francis said he found it “rather disturbing that the defendant having admitted that the particulars of claim have all been pleaded following the usual precedents for pleading defamation actions, still persisted with the exceptions”. 

Judge Francis added that “this is clearly a waste of court time and resources. The exceptions raised by the defendant are the worst form of nitpicking that I have come across in my 13 years on the bench”.

Many experts see this settlement as a clear indication that Joffe’s allegations and tirade against SASCOC could not be substantiated. 

However, now in the US, Joffe says Hollard Insurance settled, but he had not, and the fight would go on.

He put out a statement in reaction to the settlement. His aim was to “set the record straight after all the factually incorrect and misleading media reports which were mostly copied and pasted from a SASCOC press release and the SASCOC website”.

 “So, for the record: I did not settle with SASCOC, I did not pay them one cent and there was no apology or retraction. I will never ever apologise for telling the truth!

“Everything I have reported on was factually correct and the truth will all one day prevail. SASCOC is a totally corrupt organisation!

“Hollard Insurance took a business decision to settle with SASCOC which I was vehemently opposed to.”

He also had a go at Primedia, claiming they did their best to discredit him after he exposed Primedia Sport in a kickback scandal for a SA Rugby commercial contract renewal.

“And they haven’t been able to answer any of my tough questions about LeadSA and how they benefit financially from all the sports parades and airport welcomes and send-offs for SA Olympic teams.”

To show that life in the Joffe household has not changed and that SASCOC was  not off the hook, he tweeted on Wednesday: “A week in SA sport: SASCOC in fighting/CEO sex scandal, ASA selection debacle, SSA shambles, Cycling financial crisis & CSA/Gupta expose!”

In his favour, all of these items have appeared in other newspapers, websites or periodicals, so nobody can lay the blame at his door.