Deputy President Jacob Zuma's legal adviser, Linda Makathini, on Monday contradicted evidence about a loan agreement given by other defence witnesses in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial in the Durban High Court.

Makathini said she was responsible for filing Zuma's declarations with Cabinet and that he had only declared the loan as a liability and not as a benefit on her advice. She said Zuma knew that the original revolving loan agreement of R2 million had never been filed in Parliament and that she had only ever seen one copy of this agreement.

Since the start of the trial, the State has been trying to locate the original loan document. Last week, Zuma's personal lawyer, Julie Mahomed, said she had taken the original but believed that her office could mistakenly have given it to Zuma's driver when he went to her office to collect two copies. She only realised the original was missing when Shaik's instructing attorney, Reeves Parsee, looked for the document.

Shaik testified that he had given the original to Zuma who had filed it in Parliament.

Makathini said when she joined Zuma's office in October 1999 she was asked to sort out a load of documents stored in briefcases and boxes. She was told to file African National Congress and personal documents separately.

She told the court on Monday she had been contacted by Parsee and Mahomed who were both looking for the original, but no one seemed to know where it was. Makathini is also a trustee of the Jacob Zuma Education Trust Fund and told the court about the difficulties experienced because of the high number of applicants for scholarships.

Before the start of proceedings on Monday, defence advocate Francois van Zyl put on record an apology by Shaik to members of the prosecution after Shaik lost his temper and called advocate Anton Steynberg a racist. "I will sort you out after the trial," Shaik told the prosecution last week.

Prosecutor Billy Downer then completed his cross-examination of Thomson CSF boss Pierre Moynot. Moynot told the court how they wanted to withdraw shares in African Defence Systems (ADS) from Shaik's Nkobi Holdings after "someone" told him that Shaik was not an acceptable black economic empowerment partner and that he was disliked by former president Nelson Mandela and President Thabo Mbeki.

He said later the rumours proved to be false and Nkobi got the shares in ADS through the Thomson headquarters in Paris. Thomson and Nkobi won a share in the government's naval corvette contract through the shareholding in ADS.

At one stage Downer started reading from a French document saying to Moynot "excuse my accent". *1

The two then disagreed with the meaning of the translation with Moynot explaining that "it is the French idiomatic". Downer said he had consulted with the French translator who had been in court to assist Moynot, if needed and the translator had agreed with the State's original translation. "That means he is not that qualified himself," said Moynot.

Downer's persistent questioning of Moynot resulted in a visibly angry Judge Hilary Squires. "What's that got to do with this case?" he interjected at one stage.

Later a highly agitated Squires said: "For heaven's sake a few hours later we've just come back to the same thing."

A few minutes later Squires again said: "I'm just telling you, you are canvassing details which are quite unnecessary." Downer said: "My lord, it's still necessary to put some questions to the client." *2

Squires said: "Make sure its just a couple."

Van Zyl told Squires the defence had two or three more witnesses to call.

The trial has been adjourned until April 4.

With acknowledgement to Wendy Jasson da Costa and Sapa.

*1 The poor man meant : "Please excuse my French" - he's excused until 2005-04-04.

*2 Master Downer must have got a condoned pass at Oxford University for the idiomatic - or am I (or is SAPA) being idiotic?