Scorpions get ready to finally take ANC deputy president to court on charges of corruption, tax-evasion and fraud.

He is likely to accept nomination for the ANC presidency while out on bail and with a potential 15-year minimum sentence hanging over his head.

The prosecution team is emboldened by the comment by SCA judge Richard Nugent that the defence claims of a political conspiracy were without merit

In the next few days, Scorpions prosecutors will draft a recommendation to acting National Director of Public Prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe that he charge ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma.

They want him charged with a package of offences, including corruption, tax-evasion and money-laundering.

The charges are set to cover not only the R1.38-million Zuma got from his former financial adviser, the convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik, and the R500000 bribe he was alleged to have solicited from French arms dealer Thint, but also subsequent payments from Shaik and other business people from the mid-’90s to as recently as mid- 2005.

The payments involved are understood to be “several times more” than the Shaik payments, according to National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) sources, and are likely to provide a “fresh perspective” on Zuma’s financial and political relationships should the matter reach the trial stage.

Should Mpshe — who replaced Vusi Pikoli after he was suspended by President Thabo Mbeki — endorse their recommendation, Zuma could be charged again within two or three weeks.

If so, Zuma is likely to accept nomination for the ANC presidency at the party’s December national conference in Polokwane while out on bail and with a potential 15-year minimum sentence hanging over his head.

Shortly before his suspension, Pikoli made it clear that any decision to re- charge Zuma depended on the outcome of the NPA’s Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) applications against the overturning of the August 2005 search warrants, which authorised raids on Zuma’s home and the premises of his lawyers, Michael Hulley and Juleka Mahomed.

On Thursday, the NPA’s bid to use the 93000 documents seized in the raids came good, albeit through a three-to- two majority decision, not a unanimous ruling by the full SCA bench.

Two judges — Ian Farlam and Tom Cloete — dissented, arguing that warrants were “inappropriately vague”.

This gave Zuma’s legal team the space to apply to the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal, a process Hulley and counsel Kemp J Kemp began with on Friday.

In the meantime, the prosecution team is set — should they get Mpshe’s approval — to press ahead with the charges, although it is clear the matter will not get to trial before next year.

Apart from the potential of the Constitutional Court ruling against a prosecution while it hears Zuma’s appeal, his legal team will, if the matter gets back to court, move that it be immediately withdrawn as part of their “Stalingrad” strategy of fighting each and every move the state makes in the case.

They had been about to launch a permanent stay of prosecution in the Pietermaritzburg High Court last year, but did not need to do so as Judge Qed’usizi Msimang struck the case from the roll, partly because of the outstanding SCA appeals on the 2005 raids. The NPA has now met these criteria.

NPA insiders say there is no indication that Mpshe will abandon the legal strategy which Pikoli had agreed to. “Thus far there is absolutely no indication that there has been any kind of policy shift under the acting head,” said one NPA official.

“If the decision [by Mpshe] is in our favour, we will have to draw up papers and finalise documentation. This could take a while, but not a long time, a week or two at the most.

“Unless there is a stay ordered by the Constitutional Court, we are most likely to press ahead with the case until somebody stops us.”

If Zuma is recharged, prosecutors have several options on how they proceed with the case. The first is to start afresh by charging Zuma and holding the initial hearing at the Durban Magistrate’s Court, later transferring the case to the High Court for trial once an indictment has been prepared. This is a longer legal process with the potential pitfall for the state of being presided over by a junior magistrate who could be intimidated by high-powered senior counsel and the crowds which previous Zuma court appearances have drawn.

Another is to go back to the Pietermaritzburg High Court with a full indictment and have the matter set down for trial once Zuma’s application for a permanent stay is dealt with. The forensic report prepared for Zuma’s original corruption trial is ready and could be presented immediately, with any additional information gleaned from documents seized in the raid on Mahomed — which the state has not seen — and Zuma’s official diary being tabled later in a supplementary report. This is understood to be the preferred option as it will move the case faster and at High Court level.

The prosecution team is also emboldened by the comment by SCA judge Richard Nugent, in the majority judgement on Thursday, that the defence claims of a political conspiracy against Zuma by the NPA were without merit.

“Other matters raised by the respondents [Zuma and Hulley] in the papers were not seriously pressed before us and in any event I do not think that they have any merit,” Judge Nugent said.

“I do not think that any of the warrants that are in issue in this appeal were legally deficient, or that they were unlawfully executed.”

What this does mean is that if Kemp makes his application for a permanent stay on the basis of the conspiracy argument, the NPA has authority from a higher court rejecting this tack.

NPA spokesman Tlali Tlali said no decision had yet been taken on prosecuting Zuma.

“This is one of the major hurdles that we have overcome thus far. That means we are on course and all processes will unfold. As soon as we are ready, we’ll pronounce on a future course of action,” Tlali said.

Prosecutors are also set to go back to court to force the Presidency and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to release Zuma’s government diary. The 2000 diary, which was discovered at Zuma’s office in the Union Buildings in the same raids, was sealed and is being kept in the Presidency pending a decision on whether to release it. However, talks between the NPA, the NIA and the Presidency have reached an impasse, and the NPA is now gearing up to go the court route.

Outside the courts, Zuma’s backers in Cosatu, the SA Communist Party and the ANC Youth League have made it clear that their support of their candidate for the ANC presidency remains.

All have already started undermining the validity and significance of the judgment, with the ANCYL saying the ruling had “no legal or political bearing on our support for Jacob Zuma to succeed Thabo Mbeki”.

Hulley has taken the approach of using the split decision to go the Constitutional Court route, while keeping up the conspiracy argument.

“The view has long been held that the investigation has been guided by improper political motives,” Hulley said. “The timing and nature of the charges, should they eventuate, will be reflective as to whether such motives still exist.”

On the ground, charging Zuma will create a groundswell of support, both from the faithful and from ANC members who, even if they do not back Zuma, are unhappy with Mbeki and his style of leadership.

At both the 2005 National General Council and this year’s policy conference, this translated into huge support for Zuma within ANC structures and a move to dilute the massive powers gifted to the ANC presidency under Mbeki.

A pre-Polokwane charge will earn Zuma fresh emotional support across the country, not only in his KwaZulu- Natal heartland, while any court appearance will give his allies a superb opportunity to whip up sympathy inside and outside ANC structures.

With acknowledgement to Paddy Harper and The Times.