Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2006-11-14 Reporter: Karima Brown Reporter:

Storm Over Remark Squires Never Made

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2006-11-14

Reporter

 Karima Brown

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

A political storm has erupted following retired high court judge Hilary Squires’ clarification that he never found a “generally corrupt relationship” to have existed between convicted businessman Schabir Shaik and former deputy president Jacob Zuma.

This follows a letter written by Squires to Business Day’s sister publication, The Weekender.

The phrase appears to have been wrongly attributed to Squires ever since he sentenced Shaik last year on corruption and fraud charges.

Last Monday, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) also attributed the phrase to Squires in its judgment upholding Shaik’s conviction.

Squires, who sentenced Shaik to 15 years in prison, incurred the wrath of Zuma’s supporters, who lambasted him following Shaik’s conviction for what they said amounted to Zuma’s “guilt in absentia”.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which has demanded that Zuma be reinstated as SA’s deputy president, yesterday also backtracked on its stance against Squires when they offered an apology to the judge.

Cosatu’s ally in the tripartite alliance, the South African Communist Party (SACP), went further and called on Chief Justice Pius Langa to institute a public investigation into the circumstances surrounding the ruling of the SCA regarding Shaik’s fraud and corruption trial with specific reference to its characterisation of his relationship with Zuma.

“The SACP is concerned that the ruling of the SCA on the Shaik matter on his relationship with the deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC), Jacob Zuma, is based on an inaccurate reading, or lack thereof, of the exact nature of the judgment made by the original trial court,” the SACP said.

It said the use of the phrase “generally corrupt relationship” in relation to one of the SCA’s rulings on the matter, and attributing this to the judgment of the trial court, amounted to a “political” rather than a “judicial and legally” based ruling by the SCA.

“This means that in its ruling, the SCA has been more influenced by perception created and fostered by the media than by a thorough reading of the judgment of the trial court ... the SCA clearly went beyond its scope with regard to the ruling in question. This is indeed a disturbing development,” the SACP said in a statement.

The media also came in for a bashing, with the SACP saying the public perception about the phrase “generally corrupt relationship” was a deliberate creation of the media.

“This alone conclusively proves that the media, in general, with very few exceptions *1, have been engaged in a deliberate exercise to try and convict the deputy president of the ANC in a court of public opinion,” the SACP said.

It called on the press ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission to conduct a public inquiry as to how the media had fostered “such a blatant lie”. This was important if the media was to maintain any semblance of “credibility and impartiality”, the SACP said.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said yesterday that the Squires remarks did not change the Shaik judgment. NPA spokesman Makhosini Nkosi said: “As far as the NPA is concerned, Squires’ comments have no legal implications for any criminal matters whatsoever.”

With acknowledgements to Karima Brown and Business Day.


*1       Two exceptions being Jeremy Gordin and Karen Bliksem.

My but these communists protestith vehemently.

It's now time for both Squires J and the SCA to release addenda to their judgments recording precisely their conclusions as to the nature of the relationship between Schabir Shaik and Jacob Zuma which led to a series of some 238 payments by the former to the latter over a period of some five years and whereby the latter disregarded his constitutional duty to assist the formers various business ventures.