Next Year Promises More Zuma High Court Action [Sunday Independent, 2006-12-17]

Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2006-12-17 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin Reporter:

Next Year Promises More Zuma High Court Action

Publication	Sunday Independent
Date	2006-12-17
Reporter	Jeremy Gordin
Web Link	www.sundayindependent.co.za

This week, representatives of the state and of Jacob Zuma and Thint agreed in judges' chambers that they will meet again in the Durban high court at the end of March to slug it out over the "Mauritian issue".

The "relief" being sought by the National Prosecuting Authority - as NPA advocate Anton Steynberg explained to Phillip Levinsohn, the deputy judge president of KwaZulu-Natal - is a "letter of authority" from a South African high court requesting the Mauritian high court to release documents that the Mauritians sealed some years ago following an action brought on the island by Thint, the French arms manufacturer.

The NPA will, on March 22, request such a letter in terms of section 2 (2) of the International Co-operation on Criminal Matters Act - and the deputy president's advocates and those of the French arms manufacturer will oppose the granting of such relief.

The documents the NPA is pursuing include the 2000 diary of Alain Thetard, then a senior Thint representative in South Africa, who "reported" in those days to senior colleagues stationed in both Mauritius and Paris.

Though Judge Hilary Squires of the Durban high court and a full bench of the supreme court of appeal (SCA) ruled - during the trial and appeal of Durban entrepreneur Schabir Shaik - that a so-called encrypted fax sent by Thetard to Mauritius and Paris contained details of a planned bribe of R500 000 for Zuma, it is understood that the state nonetheless wants Thetard's diary. This is because it allegedly contains fuller details of meetings between himself and Zuma, and the state wants to build an even more watertight case against Zuma.

"Yeah," Michael Hulley, Zuma's attorney, said this week, "there is a funny sort of game going on *1.

"The state said in its affidavit in this most recent matter that the national director of public prosecutions has not yet decided whether to re-charge Zuma and/or Thint.

"That is the NPA's official stance. It bears as much resemblance to reality as the official ANC line that there is no presidential race going on in this country.

"The state is clearly taking all the steps necessary for re-charging Zuma - this latest move to try to have the Mauritian documents unsealed is just one of those steps," said Hulley.

The other matter with which the state will have to deal before it will be able to feel free to re-charge Zuma and Thint formally is the three search and seizure appeals, scheduled to be heard at the SCA during the last week of May.

The state lost two of these cases, which related to the validity of the search warrants used to raid the Johannesburg offices of Julekha Mohamed, a former Zuma attorney, the Durban offices of Hulley, and Zuma's homes in both Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal.

The state won the third case, related to the warrants used to search the Pretoria offices of Thint and the home of Pierre Moynot, Thint managing director, but Thint will appeal against this finding at the SCA.

"What happens with the search and seizure appeals is a big issue because on the outcome of those matters depends what documents the state will be able to use.

"If the state can use some but not others, or can't use any of the documents … then the state will have to redo its forensic report. We could still be fiddling about with all this by the end of next year."

Hulley said the state's case against Zuma appeared to consist of:

• The corruption charges on which Shaik was found guilty in the Durban high court relating to the use of Zuma's name and influence to achieve certain business goals;

• The corruption charge on which Shaik was found guilty related to a Thint bribe for Zuma; and

• Other charges, which will infer that Zuma allegedly received money from people other than Shaik and that, though Zuma may not have done anything specific for these people, it had to be assumed that there was an expectation that he would or could.

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.

*1 There's neither a game going on here, nor is it funny.

Two things are happening :

'Zuma's and The Two Thints' legal teams are doing everything they can to get their clients' off the hook :
- on legal technicalities; and
- by diminishment of the admissible evidence.
The State is trying to catch up on its cases which were spiked by the extraordinary conduct of two of the biggest jackasses in the history of South African jurisprudence, Dr Penuell Maduna and Adv Bulelani Ngcuka.

If it were not for these two fools, all of Schabir Shaik, Jacob Zuma and The Two Thints would be receiving care in the renal transplant unit of St Augustine's Hospital in sunny Durban.