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The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has been criticised for using a fake story about the death of a child from eating “rotten” polony as an election campaign tool.
This week, the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) High Court in Durban ruled in favour of Gen4foods, barring the EFF from sharing the story on social media.
Gen4foods, which distributes its Thompsons Meat-branded products at Shoprite, had taken legal action against the EFF and Anthony Hadebe, the man who publicly made the allegations, seeking a permanent order to prevent further distribution of the defamatory posts.
The ruling follows an interim interdict granted by Judge Bruce Bedderson in November 2023.
The interdict against Hadebe was confirmed the following month after he failed to appear in court as he was unrepresented, while the EFF continued to oppose the granting of the final order.
Hadebe claimed he purchased a 2-kilogram family value pack of chicken polony, branded under Thompsons Meat, from a Shoprite store at Bridge City Shopping Centre in Durban in August 2023.
He alleged that his nine children, wife, and brother ate the polony and subsequently fell ill.
A few days after the incident, Hadebe returned to the Shoprite store to file a complaint about the polony’s quality.
On 29 August, he met with two Gen4foods representatives, who, in a gesture of goodwill, provided him with a complimentary pack of Thompsons products.
However, Hadebe later sent an email claiming that the replacement polony was also “rotten”.
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Prior to this meeting, Hadebe had already made several social media posts, alleging that his “16-month-old son” had been referred to a clinic and was “getting worse”.
The day before meeting with the Gen4foods representatives, he publicly called for help to seek justice for his “son”.
Then, on 31 August, Hadebe posted that his “daughter” had died as a direct result of consuming the polony.
In another post on 10 September, he again referred to his ‘son”, urging South Africans not to buy from Shoprite, “especially Thompsons Meat products”.
In the same post, he mentioned that he was advised to file a case at the Ntuzuma police station the day before.
Hadebe’s posts soon caught the attention of the EFF, which called for a boycott of Thompsons’ products and demanded justice for the child.
The EFF interviewed Hadebe and, on 1 November, shared a video on X (formerly Twitter) where Hadebe, speaking in IsiZulu, claimed his life was a “mess”.
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He claimed he lost his job, was no longer with his fiancée due to the loss of the child, and had attempted suicide.
Additionally, the man also alleged that the polony was infested with worms.
He was later interviewed by a local television station and newspaper.
Gen4foods then initiated its own investigation, which included testing a sample of the “rotten polony” provided by Hadebe at the South African National Accredited System (SANAS) laboratory.
The Anelich Consulting Food Safety Solutions also conducted examinations on the polony.
Both test results confirmed that neither the “complaint sample” nor the “retention sample” contained any toxins that could have caused illness.
It later emerged that a child had indeed died; however, she was not Hadebe’s biological daughter.
The child, referred to as M, died from natural causes in late October 2023. She was born in July 2022.
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M’s mother was in a relationship with Hadebe at the time, and her biological father, Mr S, confirmed that the child had been unwell before her death.
Mr S became aware of the allegations being spread by Hadebe and the EFF, and his sister raised concerns that the party was exploiting the child’s death as a “campaign tool” for the upcoming national elections, which took place on 29 May 2024.
In response, the sister sent an email, on behalf of her brother, to Gen4foods, warning them that they were being “scammed.”
Mr S later met with company representatives, providing his account of the events, which he detailed in an affidavit. This led Gen4foods to pursue legal action.
On Wednesday, Judge Robin Mossop criticised the EFF for not thoroughly investigating or verifying the accuracy of Hadebe’s account, which contained “inexplicable contradictions”.
“In stating what it did, the second respondent [EFF] took no steps to satisfy itself that the allegations made by the first respondent [Hadebe] were true and failed to closely question the obvious inconsistencies in the first respondent’s changing versions of what had allegedly occurred.
“It is to the shame of the second respondent that it considered it acceptable to seize upon the death of a young child and assimilate it into its election campaign to make political capital out of it,” the judgment reads.
The judge highlighted that the EFF still maintained that it was justified in posting the messages and videos about the matter.
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“In its first message posted on 1 November 2023, the second respondent stated that the applicant and Shoprite would ‘pay for their sins’.
“In its post on 2 November 2023, the second respondent stated that those responsible would be ‘held accountable for their actions’.
“The sinner was, in fact, neither the applicant nor Shoprite, but the second respondent.
“The second respondent will accordingly understand that it must now also be held accountable for its actions. In such circumstances, the applicant is entitled to its costs on a punitive scale,” Mossop ruled.
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