Legal fees dispute may delay Zuma’s trial

JACOB Zuma’s lawyer has warned that the former president’s corruption trial could potentially be delayed for years as a result of a looming court battle over whether or not the state will continue to fund his legal fees.

And Zuma is likely to use an ongoing funding dispute in the murder prosecution of apartheid-era policemen‚ which has halted the case against them‚ to argue for that delay.

Attorney Michael Hulley has confirmed that Zuma will ask that the case against him be postponed until there is legal certainty over whether or not he remains entitled to statefunded representation.

Zuma’s lawyers had previously told the Durban High Court that they would file for a review of the decision by National Director of Public Prosecutions Shaun Abrahams to proceed with the case against the former president by mid-May. But Hulley has now said that this review will not happen anytime soon because of uncertainty over who will pay for it.

Hulley maintained that this meant Zuma would likely not go on trial in November‚ which is when prosecutor Billy Downer said the state would be ready to proceed with the case – insisting that the former president could only face the charges against him once he knew if and how his representation would be funded.

The state has yet to indicate if it would agree to‚ or oppose‚ this request for a postponement of Zuma’s trial.

Zuma’s funding crisis has been driven by two separate challenges to the continued state sponsorship of his corruption trial legal battles. The Democratic Alliance is challenging a 2006 “deal” between Zuma and then-president Thabo Mbeki to fund the costs of his defence‚ while the EFF has gone further by seeking to force the lawyers who were paid as part of that deal to pay back the money.

Hulley has previously indicated Zuma would also consider seeking a permanent stay of his prosecution. Those legal battles could take up to a decade to finalise.

The funding dispute over Zuma’s trial may result in the long trial delay that opposition parties were fighting to avoid. And there is legal precedent for such a delay.

Last week‚ Polokwane mayor Thembisile Nkadimeng joined the apartheid policemen accused of murdering her sister Nokuthula Simelane in seeking to compel the police to pay the costs of their defence.

Simelane was a 23-year-old underground operative of the African National Congress when she was abducted by members of the security police in September 1983 and brutally tortured. She was never seen alive again.

In court papers filed in support of the police officers receiving state funding‚ Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza SC‚ former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigative unit‚ said the police suggestion the former security policemen “were engaged in a private frolic of their own is not only an absurd proposition‚ it is an expedient and wholly false claim”.

“They were mere junior officers acting at the behest of a powerful and brutal organisation‚” Ntsebeza said.

The case against the former police officers accused of Simelane’s murder was postponed pending the outcome of the funding dispute.

Hulley confirmed that Zuma will use the apartheid-era case to argue there is clear precedent justifying the postponement of his trial. —