DURBAN — The legal teams of African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma and French arms company Thint had not produced factual evidence disputing the lawfulness of attempts by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to obtain documents from Mauritius in its investigation, the Pietermaritz-burg High Court heard yesterday.

State attorney Billy Downer urged the court yesterday to sign a formal letter of request for 13 documents being held by Mauritius authorities. He said Zuma and Thint were relying on “supposition” and “argument” in their attempts to prove that the state may be acting unlawfully in its bid to obtain the documents.

The documents include the originals of a diary of former Thint CE Alain Thetard, which may prove that a meeting took place between Thetard, Zuma and his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, who is serving a 15-year sentence for fraud and corruption.

The state also wants to obtain affidavits from Mauritian officials relating to the safe-keeping of the documents since the first copies were made of them in 2001.

Zuma made a surprise entrance and left shortly before the proceedings ended. There were a few ANC supporters outside the building but nothing like the hundreds of supporters at earlier court proceedings, where the charges against Zuma and Thint were struck off the roll in September last year.

Downer said the state had been castigated by the court for not being ready to proceed in the first case, and now Zuma and Thint were attempting to get the court to castigate the NPA for trying to obtain information.

Zuma’s lawyer, Kemp Kemp, stopped the state’s evidence only once during the day, after Downer incorrectly referred to Zuma as “Accused No 1”, when in fact Zuma was “Respondent No1”.

Kemp was scolded by Judge Phillip Levenson, for bringing 69 pages of new evidence to the court at the end of the first day’s proceedings.

“How can I apply my mind to it? It’s discourteous. I don’t care what the practice is. I’m not impressed. I’ll take the documents and read them overnight,” he said.

Thint and Zuma’s court documents argue that the search and seizure operations conducted by SA in Mauritius were unlawful. They say it was improper for a South African court to adjudicate on these matters because a Mauritius Supreme Court order had not authorised that copies of the seized documents be given to South African authorities.

They say the state’s application should therefore be deemed unconstitutional.

With acknowledgement to Edward West and Business Day.