The man who has on two previous occasions unsuccessfully launched court applications against Deputy President David Mabuza has now asked the high court for permission to film court proceedings of a rehashed matter he has brought against the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency and 23 others, for the purpose of making a movie.
Fred Daniels was left with his reputation in tatters after a magistrate in a Carolina, Mpumalanga, court found he was attempting to hide his own illegal activities by abusing court processes when he brought a frivolous application for a protection order against Mabuza.
Recently, Daniels was forced to with- draw another fraudulent interdict which he had launched in the Johannesburg High Court against Mabuza, in which he claimed the deputy president hatched a plot to kill him.
Mabuza was not in South Africa at the time Daniels claimed he was.
This time, Daniels is suing the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency and 23 others for billions in damages. He claims the defendants conspired to block him from obtaining the rights to start a reserve in Mpumalanga.
He first cited Mabuza personally and broadcast this in the media, but later withdrew the case against Mabuza in his personal capacity. Now Daniels has launched an application to film and record parts of the proceedings and use the footage in a movie he is making, to be marketed locally and abroad.
Daniels wants only his evidence and that of an attorney, Richard Spoor, filmed in open court, not the evidence of the witnesses who gave evidence against him, as he fears that “his movie won’t look great then”, said an acquaintance.
But Daniels’s plans are unlikely to materialise if the judge is to give regard to the Consolidated Practice Directives of the High Court.
The directives are geared towards allowing the public access to court hearings through technology.
Media access to court proceedings and the reporting of these as if the public was in court is an established principle. But this does not apply to making a socio-political movie where the content does not to give the public objective commentary of court proceedings, as Daniels only wants to tell his side of the story on film.
“The intention here is clearly to promote the cause of Fred Daniels,” Mabuza’s attorney, Nelson Govender, said in affidavit before court.
“Media access to court proceedings is to demonstrate to the public what happened in court as if the public was present,” Govender said. Judgment on the application is expected in a few days.