[1] The plaintiff is H.R.H. Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He has instituted a defamation action against three defendants. He has claimed damages in an amount of R200 000- together with interest and costs as well as the publication of an apology and a ‘retraction’. Counsel referred, throughout their submissions, to the plaintiff as ‘the Prince’. I shall do likewise. The alleged defamation arises from an article published on 30 June 2010 by Business Day, a daily newspaper of which the first defendant is the owner and publisher and the second defendant, Peter Bruce, the editor. In that article it was reported that the third defendant, ‘an independent political analyst’ had said that the Prince ‘has always been a violent man’. I shall refer to the first defendant as ‘the newspaper” and the second defendant as the ‘editor’.