JOHANNESBURG - While Democratic Alliance (DA)  leader Helen Zille  celebrated her Supreme Court of Appeal victory, Cape Town businessman Richard Young had little reason to be happy.

Young was the original complainant about corruption in the 1999 arms deal, and the DA asked Young to join their application when they launched their 2009 bid to have the decision not to prosecute Jacob Zuma reviewed.

While the DA and Young won the case,  Young was ordered to pay the costs of the matter.  “As the original whistleblower, and as a person whose company lost out on millions because of corruption, I obviously had the legal standing to challenge the decision,” Young told The Citizen yesterday.

“If the DA had acted alone the courts may have said they were meddling in something that did not concern them. I’m still studying the judgment as the decision to make me pay the costs when the DA won the case is difficult to understand.”

The DA’s James Selfe indicated  the party would assist with Young’s legal costs.

Advocate Paul Hoffman said  the decision to award costs against Young was probably due to the Supreme Court of Appeal deciding  Young had not made  a clear enough case *1 against  Zuma, and had not convinced the court his intervention was in the public interest *2.

With acknowledgements to Paul Kirk and The Citizen.

*1       The affidavits were drafted up by very experienced senior counsel and substantially supported by my own detail input with support annexures.

They are extremely detailed and extremely clear.

*2      The affidavits made it very clear that my application was in the following respects :

• to support the DA's  review application;
• in my own private interest;
• in the interest of the company of which I am the sole and managing director; and
• in the public interest.