Zuma trial: ‘No one above law’
WHEN any country jailed a former or sitting president, as South Korea, Israel and Peru have done, it helped affirm that no person was above the law, with no double standards, says political analyst Keith Gottschalk.
This as former president Jacob Zuma is expected to appear in court to face a raft of corruption charges in the Durban High Court today.
“The fact that the prosecution of Zuma has been stalled for a decade is a symptom of that institution being weakened under Zuma, and that our democratic separation of powers is restored under President Ramaphosa,” said Gottschalk.
“Earlier in our history, the Dutch East India Company fired Jan van Riebeeck for corruption a decade before they again hired him to deploy him to Cape Town. Cape Colony prime minister Cecil Rhodes’s scandalous corruption went unpunished during the 1890s, though his government had to pay out damages after a court case.”
Zuma is set to appear to answer to 16 charges that stem from the multibillion-rand arms deal the country negotiated in the late 1990s, along with representatives of French arms manufacturer Thales.
Political analyst Somadoda Fikeni said: “It is good because it shows we have a legal system that is intact and favours no one, no matter how high the office one holds or held.
“It is at the same time not very good when you have people in high office having claims against them and going to court because of their alleged deeds.”