The Durban High Court yesterday barred the Democratic Alliance (DA) and its eThekwini mayoral candidate, Haniff Hoosen, from making further statements linking three senior city officials to the so-called water tanker mafia. The court ruled that the party may still criticise how they run the city’s water services.

The case concerned a DA election billboard on the N2 highway in Durban showing the faces of Mayor Cyril Xaba, city manager Musa Mbhele, and Ednick Msweli, who headed the city’s water and sanitation department, with the words: “You can stop the water tanker mafia. Vote DA for water in your taps.” The billboard went up on 28 September and was later taken down, but the three officials went to court, arguing that it was defamatory and that statements about it continued.

Acting Judge DJ Nzimande agreed. He found that a reasonable reader would take the billboard to mean the officials were complicit in the activities of the water tanker mafia, and that the DA had infringed their right to dignity. “I therefore find that the publication is extremely damaging to the applicants and the positions that they hold in society,” he said. The DA must remove posts and statements about the water tanker mafia within 24 hours and pay the costs of the case.

The order does not require an apology. It allows the DA to criticise the officials for “the performance of their functions, the state of water services and infrastructure, [and] the procurement and management of water tankers”.

The DA presented the ruling as a win. “That is a victory for us because the other party wanted us to apologise,” Hoosen said outside court. The party says the city has about 13 000 active water leaks and loses an estimated 21 billion litres of treated water a month.