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Zuma’s tooth and nail fight for a permanent stay of prosecution

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Former president Jacob Zuma will be in the dock this week as the arms deal case heads for a stay of prosecution showdown. Picture: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Felix Dlangamandla
Former president Jacob Zuma will be in the dock this week as the arms deal case heads for a stay of prosecution showdown. Picture: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Felix Dlangamandla

It’s been 15 years since former president Jacob Zuma’s one-time financial adviser Schabir Shaik faced prosecution for corruption, and yet the disgraced former ANC leader is still fighting tooth and nail not to be indicted on the same charges that saw Shaik being sentenced to 15 years, serve two years and then get released on medical parole.

Zuma’s corruption trial recommences on Monday morning - and has been set aside until Friday - in the Pietermaritzburg division of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court.

The former president is in the dock facing 16 charges of fraud, money laundering, corruption and racketeering linked to 783 payments that French company Thales allegedly made to him in connection with the infamous arms deal.

The case was postponed in November last year after Zuma’s legal team applied for a permanent stay from prosecution.

READ: Zuma’s co-accused French arms company does not believe a fair trial will be possible

His new legal team brought three arguments to substantiate their request for a permanent stay of prosecution.

“There have been unreasonably long delays in getting the case to trial, including political conspiracy and interference at the National Prosecuting Authority leading to the prosecution of the former president,” argued Zuma’s legal counsel, Muzi Sikhakhane.

The senior counsel also argued that there were “pretrial irregularities which included unlawful spying” on his client “as evidenced by the leaked Brown Moles report in 2006.”

“To any objective and truly unbiased mind, the prejudice and injustice visited on Zuma is self-evident. The facts and history of the Zuma prosecution … reveal a pattern of unlawful conduct that should attract the severest reprimand by our courts,” argued Sikhakhane in his heads of argument.

Counsel for the state Wim Trengove argued that the application was “nothing more than a continuation of Zuma’s strategy of using civil litigation to postpone a criminal trial and delay justice.”

The judge granted the prosecution time to prepare its arguments on why this trial should continue and Zuma be denied his request for a permanent stay of prosecution.

Zuma, himself, addressing crowds - who had come out in their numbers to show support for the former president - outside the high court in November last year said, “due to the amount of years that have passed since the alleged crime took place and the fact that the investigators had illegally obtained evidence in pursuit of this matter, this case should be quashed and never reopened.”

The irony in this particular matter is the fact that the applicant, Zuma, calling for a stay because of “a significant delay in prosecution” was arguably the essential cause of the delay.

His legal team has also argued that there has been external interference emanating from the so-called spy tapes, recordings of phone conversations between South Africa’s first national director of public prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka and former Scorpions head Leonard McCarthy discussing when to time the service of Zuma’s indictment — before or after the ANC’s 2007 Polokwane elective congress. Zuma’s legal team has argued this to have been in order to influence the case’s outcome.

At the time Ngcuka - although having admitted that there was a prima facie case against Zuma - decided only to charge Shaik who was accused of paying R1.2 million to Zuma, who served then as deputy president of the country, over a period of seven years.

Shaik was also accused of attempting to secure an annual bribe of R500 000 from French company Thales.

Sikhakhane, therefore argued that “once there was a prima facie case against Zuma, Ngcuka was duty-bound to prosecute” and his actions were indefensible and demonstrated “a deliberate and most sinister motive to prejudice Zuma and hang him out to dry”.

Adding to the former president’s woes, the North Gauteng High Court in December ruled that the state was not liable for the legal cost incurred by Zuma.

The full bench ruled that all necessary steps must be taken to recover all the money after the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters had asked the court to declare that it was illegal for the state to pay Zuma’s legal costs.

There was, however, some respite for Zuma as the ruling ANC at the time pledged to find a way of footing the bill for its former leader.

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