Pretoria – A manipulation of the prosecution processes against President Jacob Zuma was aimed at crippling him in the race for the ANC presidency at the watershed Polokwane conference in 2007, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Tuesday.
“It would be an enormous mistake, an enormous abuse of the NPA (National Prosecution Authority) powers. The fact that it didn’t work out in this case, matters not. As a result of this strategy, Mr Zuma would then not be president, Zuma would have suffered a loss at Polokwane. Mr Mpshe’s decision (to drop charges) was about the enormity of what you were trying to achieve,” said Advocates Kemp J Kemp SC, who is representing Zuma.
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“If the DA is saying because things didn’t happen that way, then it is nothing, then we deserve to be told that. People should know that nothing really happens if somebody in the NPA does something like that.”
A full bench of three judges, led by deputy judge president Aubrey Ledwaba, is hearing representations on the circumstances and implications of the 2009 controversial decision by then acting National Director of Public Prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe to drop 783 charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering against Zuma.
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Kemp argued that the transcripts of secretly recorded phone calls, including conversations between former prosecutions boss Bulelani Ngcuka and Scorpions chief Leonard McCarthy, commonly referred as the spy tapes, indicate that the prosecution of Zuma was being used “to secure certain political results”.
“What I am saying to this court and what we are are contending is that, in this case, the reason for that (interference in the prosecution) was to have a different individual as president of the ANC. That was what this was all about. That was enormous,” said Kemp.
“It was like arresting somebody we know is going to be a kidney donor to Mr Zuma. We know he is critical so if we arrest that person (donor) now instead of in a weeks time. If it happens that another kidney is found after you have done it, it doesn’t change the enormity of the abuse.
“The abuse is what is the NPA’s powers were being used for. It was being used to determine who was going to be the president of this country. It was being used in ulterior purposes. That is how Mr Mpshe and other members of the top (NPA) management saw it.”
Kemp said the use of the prosecution process to determine the subsequent president of South Africa was an extreme “affront to justice” which Mpshe could not ignore.
“May I put it to the court at this level. It is an enormous affront to the criminal justice system, civil society and the structures of governance. The choice of a president is of great importance in how we govern this country,” said Kemp.
“What you see here is, the NPA with its enormous powers to indict and to prosecute, these powers now blatantly being used to try and decisively influence the outcome of a presidential election process. We say to you, that is a serious and enormous issues.”
Kemp said the NPA powers were being used “to try and inflict a very significant event upon the people of this country”.
The Democratic Alliance has approached the courts with an application to set aside the NPA’s decision to drop 738 charges against Zuma.
The charges stemmed from the country’s 1999 arms deal and the decision by then acting NPA head Mpshe to withdraw the case, paving the way for Zuma’s election as president the following month.
The DA went to court soon after, but the actual review has taken more than six years as a result of a lengthy case within a case to secure the release of the so-called spytapes – privately recorded of phone calls Mpshe said indicated that the timing of the charges was manipulated by backers of former president Thabo Mbeki.
African News Agency
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