Parliment – On the eve of the start of the review of the 2009 decision to drop charges against President Jacob Zuma, the Democratic Alliance said the Hawks’s questioning of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan had made impartiality in the criminal justice system more relevant than ever.
“If you look at what is happening between Pravin Gordhan and (South African Revenue Service Commissioner) Tom Moyane, you will be forgiven for thinking there are political agendas going into the decision to prosecute,” James Selfe, the chairman of the Democratic Alliance’s federal executive, told a media briefing in Cape Town on Monday.
Selfe said it was critical that the country’s highest courts established “beyond doubt” the principle that decisions to investigate and to prosecute must be based on fact and law alone.
The North Gauteng High Court will on Tuesday begin hearing the DA’s application to set aside the National Prosecuting Authority’s decision in April 2009 to drop 738 charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering against Zuma. The charges stemmed from the country’s 1999 arms deal and the decision by then acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe to withdraw these, paved the way for Zuma’s election as president the following month.
The DA went to court soon after, but the actual review has been more than six years in the coming because of a lengthy case within a case to secure the release of the so-called spytapes, wiretaps of phone calls Mpshe said indicated that the timing of the charges was manipulated by supporters of former president Thabo Mbeki.
Selfe said so far the DA has spent R10 million in funds from party donors on the case, and went on to acknowledge that it might not end in the Gauteng division. He said he was sure the NPA would appeal if it were to lose, and the DA would do the same given how strongly it felt about the principles at stake.
“The National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) heads of argument make it clear that it is hell bent on advancing President Zuma’s narrative that there was a political conspiracy against President Zuma which warranted the dropping of the charges,” he added.
The DA is arguing that the charges were dropped for political reasons and that the NPA’s decision was therefore irrational and should be set aside. Selfe added that Mpshe had sought to abdicate sole responsibility for the decision as the NPA’s heads of argument insists it was “polycentric”.
If the DA were to win the court order it is seeking, the 2009 decision would be set aside and the NPA made to reconsider. It would not lead to an automatic re-instatement of the charges.
Selfe said he believed the DA had a strong case. If it were to win, it would be another setback in court for the president while he awaits the ruling of the Constitutional Court in the Nkandla case. Zuma conceded last month he was obliged to heed the findings of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela on the R216m project to upgrade his private home and reimburse the state part of the sum.
Last week, there were signs of dissent between Zuma and the ANC over the Hawks’s decision to demand answers from Gordhan in the protracted probe over allegedly illicit spying by the revenue service while he was running it. The ANC said the letter of questions sent to Gordhan less that a week before he delivered the 2016 budget, was a plot to undermine the trusted finance minister. However, Zuma’s office disagreed.
African News Agency