Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma’s lawyers asked for a postponement to file their heads of argument in the DA’s application to review the decision to drop corruption charges against him in the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday.
Democratic Alliance MP James Selfe said Zuma asked for a postponement and it was granted until June 22.
“Thereafter will ask for the substantive review, but it won’t be a court appearance,” he said.
Selfe said after the heads of argument was filed, the deputy judge president would be approached for a court date.
The court is expected to determine a timeline to hear the DA’s application to review the dropping of charges against Zuma.
In February, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said it was opposing the matter. This meant that the case had to be removed from the unopposed court roll and set down for an agreed date on the court roll.
The DA was handed the spy tapes last year after the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the NPA had to comply with a previous order to release the tapes. Zuma had opposed the move. The recordings, internal memoranda, reports and minutes of meetings dealing with the contents of the recordings had to be provided.
The tapes, containing recorded phone conversations, allegedly reveal collusion between the former head of the Directorate of Special Operations (the now defunct Scorpions) Leonard McCarthy, and the NPA’s former head Bulelani Ngcuka, to manipulate the prosecutorial process before the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007.
Zuma was elected ANC president at the conference. Former president Thabo Mbeki had been a contender for another term. The charges were dropped shortly before Zuma was sworn in as the country’s President in 2009.
The then acting national director of public prosecutions, Mokotedi Mpshe, said the tapes showed there was a political conspiracy against Zuma and so the case against him could not continue. The Sunday Times published a compilation of transcripts from the so-called spy tapes after the newspaper was granted access to them by the High Court in Pretoria.
ANA