By Fred Kockott
President Jacob Zuma will grant his erstwhile friend, Schabir Shaik, a presidential pardon and maybe even "give him back R39.2 million of his ill-gotten gains", Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said yesterday.
Addressing her party's provincial congress in KwaZulu-Natal, Zille said: "Shaik needs to be appeased because - as one half of a generally corrupt relationship - he has too much dirt on the president."
Zille also said Zuma's rise to power was akin to the plot of a third-rate political thriller and brazenly challenged Zuma to sue her if her statements were untrue.
'Zuma is allergic to courts' "But he won't do that, because it would mean proving me wrong in an open court - and Zuma is allergic to courts, because they tend to reveal the truth," said Zille.
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She further warned that the "boetie-boetie" mentality of the ANC, and modus operandi of Zuma's ruling clique, was "to protect the politically powerful at all costs" and "remove any impediment to unfettered power".
"If we join all the dots, we see how Jacob Zuma, behind a facade of charm, is slowly dismantling our constitution, bit by bit," said Zille.
She said as Zuma had been "willing to ride roughshod over the constitution to get into power, he will continue doing it to stay there".
She said there was currently "a collective amnesia around the events that led to Zuma's assumption of the presidency", but that it was important that the truth came out. "The cover-ups and obfuscation keep us in chains. South Africa will never be a healthy constitutional democracy unless we make sure the truth comes out," said Zille.
She said after it had emerged in court in 2005 that Shaik had bribed him, Zuma had two choices: to go to trial to prove his innocence or to find every conceivable legal technicality to delay his court case "while his henchmen plotted a strategy to ensure he never stood trial at all."
"The strategy was to co-opt, cajole and neutralise every individual and institution that stood between him and the presidency, regardless of whether these actions were lawful or even constitutional," said Zille. "The Zuma clique's prime target was Thabo Mbeki, not out of revenge, as some people believe, but because it needed control of the powerful levers" of the presidential office.
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