NPA boss plagiarised judge in Zuma ruling

Published Apr 15, 2009

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Red-faced officials have admitted that acting National Prosecuting Authority head Mokotedi Mpshe plagiarised a Hong Kong judge in his explanation of why he was dropping all charges against ANC President Jacob Zuma.

But NPA spokesperson Tlali Tlali on Tuesday insisted that Mpshe's failure to acknowledge his borrowing of Hong Kong High Court Justice Conrad Seagroatt's December 2002 ruling - in his reasoning on the Zuma decision - was an "innocent oversight".

"We are recognising that what we said was based on that judgment and we are in no way attempting to pass that ruling off as our own. We regret the oversight, but it in no way detracts from the decision that advocate Mpshe reached," he said.

Tlali further pointed out that Mpshe was fully aware that his statement on the Zuma decision would receive international media attention, and he would therefore not have deliberately plagiarised from any material.

Mpshe, who is on leave, was not available for comment on why he had relied so heavily on Justice Seagroatt's decision, which was ultimately overturned on appeal.

James Myburgh, the editor of the website politicsweb.co.za, on Tuesday revealed that large tracts of Mpshe's lengthy explanation were word-for-word copies of a judgment handed down by Justice Seagroatt.

In words echoed by Mpshe in his reasoning on the Zuma decision, Justice Seagroatt had said: "It is against this evolved statement of broad principle that the prosecution's failures and shortcomings with regard to disclosure must be seen and tested. Those for close consideration are best summed up by such expressions as 'so gravely wrong', 'gross neglect of the elementary principles of fairness', 'so unfair and wrong', and 'misusing or manipulating the process of the court'. If those failures can properly be so categorised, are they such as to make it unconscionable that a retrial should go forward?"

Myburgh said: "It rather strikingly cites all the British Commonwealth judgments that Mpshe's statement referred to. Even more strikingly, the phrases quoted are almost all the same as well - give or take some self-serving truncation and rewriting by the NPA."

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