Publication: The Star
Issued:
Date: 2007-11-09
Reporter: Karyn Maughan
Reporter:
Jacob Zuma's often publicised desire for his day in court is
looming ever closer after South Africa's second highest court dismissed four
appeals into the legality of documents seized from Zuma's house and his
attorneys, and the state's bid to garner evidence from Mauritius.
The four rulings handed down in yesterday's judgment by the Supreme Court of
Appeal are a devastating blow to the attempt by South Africa's one-time deputy
president to clear his name of corruption charges.
But the decision also throws up two thorny issues: one nettle for the ruling
African National Congress to grasp, the second for the National Prosecuting
Authority.
The ANC meets in Polokwane in little over a month to elect its new leaders. The
question it faces is stark: does it choose as its next leader someone who has
the sword of Damocles hanging over him, which is the same reality President
Thabo Mbeki had to face up to when he fired Zuma in June 2005 after Judge Hilary
Squires had convicted Zuma's erstwhile financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, on
corruption and fraud charges.
Bearing in mind the challenges that the ANC faces as a party, and indeed as the
government, from service delivery to living up to its manifesto in terms of the
nation's poor and all the other attendant challenges of running this country,
can it really afford to elect as its leader a person who
could be in a court next year?
The party is faced by the unprecedented and peculiar
dilemma where a person announced his leadership intentions the moment his legal
problems with the state began.
And if he is elected, he would make his legal problems the party's.
Secondly, in fairness to Zuma, the NPA must, if a prima
facie case does exist *1, quickly bring him to court or clear his name once and
for all. Our constitution demands no less.
As for Zuma, it remains perplexing that the man who
demanded his day in court *2 is
doing his damnedest to keep the NPA off his track and in
the process avoid that day as long as possible.
With acknowledgements to
The Star.
*1 A prima facie case does exist, the black advocate, he
said so.
*2 He needs this day in court like he needs a whole in the
head from a 7,62 mm umshini wami.
It we The People who needs this day in court.