Jacob Zuma makes an extraordinary admission
• Former president tells top court he would have testified in Shaik’s trial only if he had been guaranteed immunity
Former president Jacob Zuma’s lastditch application to stop his corruption prosecution does not appear to pose a threat to the state’s plans to put him on trial this year but it does contain a damaging admission that may be used against him if and when he goes on trial.
For the first time Zuma has revealed why he chose not to testify in the trial of his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, who was convicted in 2005 of corrupting him with multiple payments and benefits, and facilitating a R500,000 a year bribe for him from French arms company Thales.
Zuma has argued for years that he should have been tried with Shaik but has now told the Constitutional Court that he would only have taken the stand in the case if he was guaranteed immunity from prosecution.
“Absent an unequivocal grant of immunity by the NPA to me it would have been ill-conceived and highly risky for me to testify for Shaik without waiving my guaranteed constitutional rights, including rights to silence and against self-incrimination,” Zuma said in a 115-page application filed at the Constitutional Court.
This is an extraordinary admission and opens Zuma up to questions about whether he believes his conduct in relation to Shaik, and any evidence he may have given in the case, would have implicated him in corruption. Immunity from prosecution is only granted in circumstances where a witness admits complicity in an alleged crime and gives honest evidence about it.
Zuma’s apparent candour on this score stands in marked contrast to the restrained submissions he made to the Supreme Court of Appeal in his failed bid to challenge the Pietermaritzburg high court’s dismissal of his application for a permanent stay of prosecution.
His Constitutional Court application demonstrates either a radical and more desperate change in Zuma’s legal strategy or profound disagreements among the lawyers pursuing his case.
The former president has also launched a renewed attack on the “vicious” National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which he blames for his “routine” portrayal as “a corrupt politician who accepts bribes”.
In that regard, Zuma slams the “despicable” conduct of former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka, who, against the advice of the Shaik prosecutors, elected not to charge him with Shaik. Ngcuka stated at the time that though there was a “prima facie” case against Zuma, it was not necessarily a winnable one.
“In the media and the court of public opinion, I was tarred and feathered as a criminal suspect, but I could never disprove that label as I was never formally brought before a court of law until 2005 or told what evidence exists to justify the label,” Zuma argues. “This is hearkening to the dark days of apartheid where anti-apartheid activists in SA could be labelled communists, placed under house arrest or suffer other indignities based on the say-so of a government minister.”
Zuma repeatedly stresses that, because he was not charged with Shaik, “I as an unindicted person was and continue to be branded as a criminal with all the accompanying damage to my reputation.” He adds that “because of the nature of this case, the unindicted coconspirator is labelled as a ‘corrupt politician’ who takes bribes and ethnic stereotypes such as ‘being controlled by Indians’ were invoked, thus multiplying any damage done to my name”.
The former president blames Ngcuka for the several efforts to remove him from office during his nine years as president. “Politicians … structured their political programmes and campaigns on my removal from office based on corruption allegations which Mr Ngcuka denied me the opportunity to address….”
In stressing how he was denied the right to defend himself, Zuma now faces the obvious question from the NPA: why not do so now, before an independent and impartial court? Zuma’s response is to again blame the NPA for besmirching his name so profoundly that his reputation is now beyond redemption.
“Even if I am acquitted, the significant taint left by the NPA’s accusations of wrongdoing may never wash entirely clean as I will always be considered a public servant who failed the test of revolutionary morality,” he says.
HIS APPLICATION DEMONSTRATES EITHER A RADICAL CHANGE IN ZUMA’S LEGAL STRATEGY OR PROFOUND DISAGREEMENTS