DA wants court to compel Zuma to give answers

The DA will seek an order from the High Court in Cape Town this week to compel President Jacob Zuma to answer the question put to him in the National Assembly last Thursday about the cost to the state of his legal bid to prevent the National Prosecuting Authority laying charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering against him.

The president failed to provide an answer to the question asked by DA leader Mmusi Maimane even though he had 16 days in which to prepare his reply. Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Lechesa Tsenoli conducted the session.

Maimane said at a briefing on Monday that Zuma’s refusal to provide an answer was a violation of the president’s constitutional duty to be accountable to Parliament. Tsenoli had also been in dereliction of his duties and had acted in a “cowardly manner” in shielding Zuma, thereby facilitating the capture and colonisation of Parliament.

The DA plans to bring a motion of no confidence in Tsenoli on the grounds that Parliament’s presiding officers have a constitutional duty to ensure that Parliament holds the executive to account.

“This was quite clearly a deliberate refusal by the president to honour his constitutional duty to the country and its people, and to tell us how much of their money he has used over the past decade to keep himself out of jail,” Maimane said.

The DA has spent about R10m in pursuing the “spy tapes” case since 2009.

“Oral questions to the president take place only once a term, roughly every three months, and remain one of the few mechanisms available to elected members of Parliament to hold the executive accountable,” Maimane said.

“Openness, transparency and accountability are the essence of what the Constitution envisaged by such oral question sessions. In a show of total disdain for our country and its people, Zuma once again made a mockery of the institution of Parliament by being unprepared and unwilling to answering the questions,” he said.

In his reply, Zuma said “the litigation referred to was not at the instance of the president but was initiated by a political party. The president has defended it, as he is entitled to do, at state expense according to the provisions of the State Attorney Act 56 of 1957.

“This benefit is extend[ed] to all who are employed in the service of the state.”

Another bone of contention for the DA is that Zuma used state resources to contest the DA’s court application until it reached the Supreme Court of Appeal, where he abandoned his opposition two months ago.

DA federal executive chairman James Selfe said that this was an abuse of the court process and a waste of taxpayers’ money. The DA believed Zuma should foot the bill personally.