Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2007-11-29 Reporter: Ernest Mabuza

Zuma's Ultimate Challenge to Judgments

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2007-11-29
Reporter Ernest Mabuza

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

Former deputy president Jacob Zuma had lodged an application with the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal against two judgments of the Supreme Court of Appeal relating to the investigations against him, his lawyer, Michael Hulley, said last night.

Hulley said he believed there were sufficient constitutional issues that affected Zuma's rights and that the court should hear them.

Earlier this month the appeal court upheld the state's appeal and ruled that documents seized from Zuma and Hulley in police raids two years ago could be used in future proceedings against Zuma, breathing new life into the stalled corruption case against the former deputy president.

The appeal court also dismissed Zuma's appeal against the issuing of a letter by a Durban High Court judge to Mauritian authorities asking them to provide 14 documents that the state requires as evidence in any prosecution of Zuma.

Charges against Zuma were struck off the roll by the Pietermaritzburg High Court last year after Judge Herbert Msimang refused the prosecution's request for a postponement. The state had been awaiting judgment in the two cases to decide on whether to recharge Zuma.

In his application, Zuma argues that aspects of the investigation infringed on his rights to dignity and to a fair trial.

Hulley said , after the appeal court judgments were passed, that in the search warrants appeal there was a dissenting judgment relating to the constitutionality of the search and seizure.

In his minority judgment, Judge Ian Farlam said he was satisfied by the high court judgment that the warrants executed on Zuma and Hulley's premises were invalid because they did not convey the ambit of the search.

Farlam said a warrant had to be reasonably intelligible *1 to the person to whom it was to be presented, in terms of the National Prosecuting Act of 1998.

However, Judge Robert Nugent, in the majority judgment, said it would not be practicable to embody in a warrant everything that was required to identify all material that had a bearing on an investigation of any complexity *1.

With acknowledgements to Ernest Mabuza and Business Day.
 


*1       When there are 93 000 potentially relevant items subject to the requested searches and seizures, how can it be possible to identify, specify and clarify every single item in advance in the form useful to the judge to whom the request is made.

It could potentially take half to one A4 size page to fully describe an item, but even if it took only a line of two, the judge might have to read a few thousand pages of such descriptions. Time is often of the essence as documentary evidence can easily disappear into the shredder, or first into the scanner and then the shredder.

This is plainly nonsense.

Common sense dictates that the correct approach is to reasonably describe the items intended for search and seizure and if any fall into a protected category to return them and not use them in a trial.

Hulley froths about a R300 restaurant bill from Steaks Galore restaurant. While in this particular case a 1991 date might indeed eventually prove to be irrelevant.

But what about the following two restaurant bills issued to Mr Pierre Moynot of Thomson-CSF :
Brasserrie de Paris, 525 Duncan Street, Hatfield, Pretoria; dated 2 October 1998, amount R284,00 (excluding waiter's tip - that might be confidential); annotated in Moynot's own handwriting, "invitation Chippy Shaik"
 
Pappas, Fourways; Pretoria; dated 28 October 1998, amount R114,23; annotated in Moynot's own handwriting, "Mr. Chippy Shaik"
What these two otherwise innocuous documentary records prove beyond any doubt is that Chippy Shaik was having one-on-one clandestine meetings with the CEO of the bidder for the corvette combat suite after the announcement by the government of the preferred bidders and in the circumstances where Shaik knew he had conflict of interest due to his position of Chief of Acquisitions and his brother's 25% equity interest in the said bidder company.

Prima facie this proves that Shaik's recusal involving matters concerning the corvette combat suite (even though this was only formally made on 4 December 1998 at the first meeting of the Project Control Board) was a sham.

Oh how I wish we could have cross-examined Moynot and Shaik on Moynot's allegation of my "elaborate theory" *2.


*2      Since formulating my "elaborate theory" *3 between June 1998 and August 2001, including the Corvette Organogram *4 in circa November 2000, I think every single aspect and link has been proven to be either true or relevant.


*3 http://www.armsdeal-vpo.co.za/special_items/reports/aide_memoire.html
 

*4 http://www.armsdeal-vpo.co.za/special_items/organograms/corvettes08.pdf
 

And yet only a fraction has been touched upon by the investigators.