He waited too long to serve his country as he should — so Abrahams must go

With former president Jacob Zuma now set to finally have his day in court, the campaign to rid our law enforcement agencies of his protectors and stooges and to clean up all of our institutions of democracy must shift gear and focus firmly on Shaun Abrahams, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority. Abrahams will deny this, but he is partly responsible for keeping Zuma out of jail for the three years he has been at the helm of the NPA. And for that it is time for him to go. On Friday Abrahams announced that charges of corruption, money-laundering and racketeering, first brought against Zuma in 2005, withdrawn a year later, brought back in December 2007 and dropped again a year-and-a-half later, have been reinstated.

While the decision is welcomed, it is difficult to believe that Abrahams would have made a similar decision if the outcome of the ANC elective conference in December last year had been different.

More than a decade after Zuma first called for the law enforcement agencies to bring him to a court of law and stop subjecting him to the court of public opinion, Abrahams announced that Zuma will be prosecuted in KwaZulu-Natal, where it all started 13 years ago. “The director of public prosecution in KwaZulu-Natal will facilitate the necessary processes for Mr Zuma and his co-accused to appear in court,” he told the country in a televised press conference on Friday afternoon.

The decision to reinstate the charges must be welcomed by all those who claim to have confidence in our criminal justice system and those who respect the independence of the judiciary. Since 2005, Zuma has used every trick in the book to avoid facing charges relating to the arms procurement deals of the 1990s when he was still a lowly politician in KwaZulu-Natal.

He was first charged on June 20 2005, making his first court appearance nine days later. Just over a year later, Judge Herbert Msimang struck Zuma’s case off the roll, saying he had “no choice” as the state’s case had “limped from one disaster to another”. This was after the prosecution said it was not ready to proceed.

A week after winning the ANC presidential race in Polokwane in December 2007, Zuma was charged again, but his prosecution was halted nine months later by Judge Chris Nicholson, who ruled that the NPA must first grant Zuma a chance to make representations. Then, on April 6 2009, the NPA, after receiving representations from Zuma, announced the dropping of all charges against him.

It is that decision, by former NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe, that allowed Zuma to contest the 2009 general election, and opened the door for him to waltz into the Union Buildings. Zuma, who was pushed out as president last month by his own political party, spent nine years in office, engineering the state capture project by close friends and family members and wreaking havoc across a host of our public institutions, with many, including the NPA, now in permanent crisis.

The process to re-charge Zuma, led by the opposition DA, has been long, at times painful and very expensive for the taxpayer. Eight years and more than R15-million in public money later, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled last November that Zuma can now face prosecution, setting aside Mpshe’s decision to withdraw the charges. This is what forced Abrahams, after receiving fresh representations, to announce that the NPA believes it can successfully prosecute Zuma. Listening to him, many may be tempted to shower him with praise for his bravery in bringing corruption charges against a powerful politician and a former head of state — something unheard of in many parts of Africa.

But one thing must be made clear. Abrahams is no South African hero. Yes, he is the one who finally took the decision to prosecute Zuma, but the decision was not his. His hand was forced by a court of law. He has to go.

He is no South African hero. His hand was forced by a court of law