Johannesburg - ‘I am just going to walk in there (North Gauteng High Court) with our lawyers and get those (spy) tapes.”
An upbeat DA leader Helen Zille made this pronouncement on Thursday morning just before she boarded a flight from Cape Town to Joburg, ahead of Thursday’s deadline for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to hand over the “spy tapes” to her party.
Speaking to The Star, Zille said she was optimistic about getting the tapes, but appeared to doubt their authenticity.
“I am very confident we will get them. I understand they have been lodged at the North Gauteng (High Court) so I am confident. We obviously have to check the authenticity of the tapes. We have to make sure they (spy tapes) are authentic. I don’t know (if they are authentic or not),” Zille said.
Zille was due to join hundreds of DA supporters in Pretoria on Thursday ahead of the deadline for the handing over of the tapes at the court. She was expected to be accompanied by DA Gauteng leader John Moodey, Gauteng north chairman Solly Msimanga and national spokespersons Marius Redelinghuys and Phumzile van Damme.
The ANC has also appealed to the NPA to comply with the judgement of the Supreme Court of Appeal.
“It is our hope that compliance with this ruling will bring this matter closer to finality,” ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa said in a statement.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled the NPA must comply with the North Gauteng High Court’s previous order and hand over the spy tapes to the DA within five days.
The tapes allegedly include the internal memoranda, record of meetings and minutes dealing with the contents of the telephone recordings of the conversation between the former head of the now defunct Scorpions, Leonard McCarthy, and the NPA’s former head Bulelani Ngcuka.
The recordings allegedly prove that the two were colluding to manipulate the prosecutorial process before the ANC’s crucial Polokwane elective conference in 2007, when Jacob Zuma was elected the party’s president ahead of the then president Thabo Mbeki.
Then acting NPA boss Mokotedi Mpshe cited the recordings as the reason to drop more than 700 charges of corruption, fraud and money racketeering charges against Zuma, shortly before he was sworn in as president in 2009.
Mpshe claimed that the tapes showed that there was political conspiracy against Zuma.
Zuma’s five-year battle to stop the DA from accessing the tapes ended last Thursday when the SCA dismissed his case.
The Star and Sapa