PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has failed to act appropriately regarding National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Shaun Abrahams and two others following their failed attempt to prosecute Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
This was the argument put before the high court in Pretoria by lawyers representing the Helen Suzman Foundation and Freedom Under Law.
The two organisations approached the court with an application to compel Zuma to suspend the senior NPA officials, including Abrahams, head of the prosecuting authority's priority crimes litigation unit Torie Pretorius and North Gauteng Director of Public Prosecutions Sibongile Mzinyathi.
Advocate David Unterhalter told a full bench of three judges that: “He (Zuma) has given no commitment on when he is going to act. What we see here is a pushing out of the boat, by the Presidency, in circumstances where we say he has an urgent obligation to act.”
The civic society groups have insisted that the top NPA officials must take the blame for bringing baseless criminal charges against Gordhan.
“What is happening in the interim is that these persons (Abrahams, Pretorius and Mzinyathi) continue in office, under circumstances where the harm they do in the sense of institutional harm just continues and the public says another organisation of constitutional significance is being abused, there is no prompt corrective action being taken to lance the burn,” said Unterhalter.
He said the trio had crashed the plane but still insist on remaining in their jobs.
Zuma had written to the three, asking them to provide reasons why they should not be suspended pending an inquiry into their fitness to hold office.
They were given until Monday to make their representations.
Zuma’s lawyer hit back, saying the civic society groups were abusing court processes.
Advocate Ishmael Semenya said the groups were acting because they believed the incompetence of Abrahams, Pretorius and Mzinyathi was “a done deal”. He denied the NPA had crashed.
Advocate Hinton Epstein, for Abrahams, told the court the NDPP was entitled in law to review the decision to prosecute Gordhan. He said the court application by two groups had been brought before the court without proper facts.
He submitted that the decision to prosecute was always “a tightrope” and the aeroplane analogy raised by Unterhalter was mere hyperbole because “we are not dealing with pilots and aeroplanes here where one cannot make a mistake”.
The NPA has been under the spotlight after charges were laid, and later withdrawn, against Gordhan and former SA Revenue Service officials Ivan Pillay and Oupa Magashula.