Zuma: DA review politically motivated

President Jacob Zuma. File photo: Dumisani Sibeko

President Jacob Zuma. File photo: Dumisani Sibeko

Published Jun 23, 2015

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Cape Town - President Jacob Zuma argued in court papers filed on Monday that a bid to have criminal charges against him reinstated was doomed because the original corruption case was a political witch-hunt.

In heads of argument submitted to the High Court in Pretoria, he said the Democratic Alliance’s application for a review of the withdrawal of the case in 2009 was likewise politically motivated.

He said it was also deeply flawed because it ignored the extent to which the decision to stop his prosecution was based on concerns on the part of the National Prosecuting Authority that the legal process had been abused for political ends.

The review application should therefore be dismissed with costs, he argued.

“The Democratic Alliance brought this review in undue haste to further its political battle with the ANC, consciously disregarding the obvious context of the decision, which is that the NPA discontinued the prosecution because the prosecution of Zuma had been used for ulterior purposes, namely political ends and that the process had been marked by abuses.”

Zuma said this had been the main thrust of his representations to the NPA demanding that it drop charges.

Then acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe withdrew more than 700 charges stemming from the 1999 arms deal shortly before the 2009 national elections, paving the way for Zuma to become president. It sparked a legal challenge by the DA that has spanned more than six years.

Much of that time was taken up by an ultimately successful battle by the DA to secure the release of the so-called spy tapes, wiretapped conversations between the former heads of the Scorpions and the NPA, Leonard McCarthy and Bulelani Ngcuka.

Zuma argued that the DA made the mistake of reading Mpshe’s decision as anchored mainly in concerns that the tapes suggested McCarthy and Ngcuka had manipulated the timing of his indictment with a view to his looming power struggle with then president Thabo Mbeki at the ANC’s Polokwane conference.

“The NPA decision to stop the Zuma prosecution has never been solely about the timing of the indictment of Zuma.”

The president proceeded to argue that prosecutorial abuses and delays had marked the case against him, and that the DA’s review application was no more than part of its own political agenda against him and the ruling party.

“In short the review was fatally flawed from the start and the DA pursued the review for political purposes.”

The DA’s case has seemingly been boosted by an affidavit from chief prosecutor Billy Downer stating that he believed the corruption charges were never fundamentally compromised by allegations of political meddling.

ANA

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