Bonang Matheba says she'll donate Rea Gopane's R300k to her foundation

“It is not my intention to benefit financially from the ruling ...”

29 January 2022 - 06:00
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Bonang Matheba plans to donate the damages payout to her educational foundation.
Bonang Matheba plans to donate the damages payout to her educational foundation.
Image: Instagram/ Bonang Matheba

Media personality Bonang Matheba has released a statement confirming her defamation case victory against Rea Gopane and explaining that she didn't intent to benefit financially from the ordeal and therefore plans to donate the money to charity.

Hours after announcing her win on Twitter, Bonang issued a statement welcoming the judgment by judge Petrus Malindi of the Johannesburg high court.

“It is with a great deal of humility that I acknowledge and welcome the vindicating and ground-breaking ruling...  on January 27, 22.”

Bonang emphasised that she proceeded with the legal options she had after Rea ignored two written requests to desist.

“After hearing argument relating to the unlawful conduct of Mr Gopane the court upheld my claim for damages, and in a precedent-setting judgment, ordered that Mr Gopane pay damages in the amount of R300,000 plus the legal costs of the action.

“It is not my intention to benefit financially from the ruling rather I wish to uplift those less fortunate than me and I will be donating the damages received to my philanthropic endeavour, the Bonang Matheba Foundation, which I established to advance the tertiary education of young women.”

Bonang said she hoped the judgment would be a lesson to individuals like Gopane “that there are consequences for abusing public platforms to defame and humiliate others”.

Read the full statement below:

The vlogger landed in hot water with Queen B last year after he claimed in one of his episodes that Bonang introduced her ex-boyfriend, rapper AKA, to cocaine.

Bonang slammed the vlogger and served him with a 500K lawsuit, and he was instructed by her legal team to retract his statements and issue an apology on his social media platforms in the form of a video and a letter.

He apologised and issued the apology but never gave B her money. In the following interactions between the pair, Rea seemed unbothered about his debt and often took to Twitter to taunt Bonang. 

After the loss on Thursday, Rea continued to act like the judgment was water off a duck's back.

See his tweets below:



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