facilitate a proper resolution of this issue. These functions are as follows:1. Pleadings define with clarity and precision the issue or questions which are in dispute between the parties and fall to be decided by the court. If the Defendant admits in his statement of defence a fact which is alleged in the statement of claim, what is admitted ceases to be in controversy between the parties. It need not be proved at the trial by any of the parties but is taken as established. It is only those facts alleged in the statement of claim and denied in the statement of defence that will require trial. They constitute the facts on which the parties have joined issues. These alone call for trial. Evidence has to be addressed to prove them. Accordingly, it is at the close of the pleadings that the scope of the dispute can be determined. [32] From the combined effect of the two principles detailed ante emerges the cardinal rule that a party is not permitted to advance evidence on a matter that is not raised in his own pleadings nor in that of his opponent. Having specifically pleaded a fact a party is bound by the fact as pleaded and cannot seek to lead evidence at variance with it. The court is also bound by the pleadings. Its jurisdiction is circumscribed within the facts as pleaded by the parties.” [22] Having admitted that the words in the context of the article were intended and were understood by the readers of the newspaper to mean that the Respondent was an imposter who had usurped the chieftaincy of Kontshingila where she is not entitled to act by virtue of the fact that she is not a Simelane, the Appellants cannot turn around, as they sought to do both in the court a quo and this court, to say that the words used are an innuendo and not defamatory per se. This is because by their admission they agreed that the meaning is apparent from the words used and is so understood by the ordinary reader of the newspaper, which reader, according to the authorities is the ordinary intelligent and reasonable man on the streets of Swaziland. This takes the words in the context of the article out of the realm of an innuendo. This is the applicable test. See for instance: Argus Printing 14