FORMER president Jacob Zuma is refusing to rule out further legal action to govern the arrangements between the judgment jailing him for 15 months and the determination of his application to rescind the order.
Zuma has now told the Constitutional Court that, depending on the outcome of his Pietermaritzburg High Court bid for a suspension of the orders that he be arrested and committed to a term of imprisonment, there are other possibilities.
”Depending on the outcome thereof and/or any further developments, there exists a possibility that fresh or consequential proceedings may be brought before this honourable court with a view of governing the interim situation between the granting of the previous order of this court and the final determination of this application,” Zuma states in his replying affidavit filed on Wednesday at the apex court before he handed himself to correctional services authorities.
In the alternative, according to Zuma, the Constitutional Court will be approached as part of its relief to grant an interim order in respect of the period between the granting of the order imprisoning him and the final determination of the rescission application.
Zuma has promised to keep the apex court informed with any latest developments.
Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Bhekisisa Mnguni will deliver his judgment in Zuma’s application to suspend the orders that he be arrested and committed to a term of imprisonment on Friday.
The former president also claims he refused to participate in the commission of inquiry into state capture’s legal action against him as a form of protest and to conscientiously object to perceived abuse and bias.
He insisted that he was not in wilful and/or bona fide (in good faith) contempt of court.
In the replying affidavit, the ex-president said the commission also raises a host of irrelevant factual disputes, controversies and unnecessary invective and provocation, which have no real bearing on the legal and constitutional issues raised in his rescission application.
”Save for the aforesaid and insofar as it may become necessary, I dispute the factual averments made by or on behalf of the commission as far-fetched and untenable. They should accordingly be rejected,” Zuma said.
He added that he did not deem it necessary or appropriate to trade insults with the commission, its secretary Professor Itumeleng Mosala and chairperson, Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
”Suffice to state that it is this kind of unsolicited and gratuitous acrimony and belligerence which is unbefitting of these parties, which made it inadvisable and virtually impossible for me to regard this commission as a place in which there was any likelihood of being treated fairly,” Zuma maintained.
On Tuesday, Mosala filed the commission’s answering affidavit in its opposition of Zuma’s rescission attempt and accused the ex-president of submitting an application riddled with falsehoods, factual misrepresentations, distortions of the law and doing so with dirty hands.
Political Bureau