Zuma back in the dock
The former president will be fighting to stay out of jail when he is back in court. He’s not the only ex-president who will be facing a judge
● Jacob Zuma won’t be the only former head of state in court this year. Others are likely to suffer the same fate, including former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and previous US president Donald Trump.
Zuma will be fighting on at least two fronts. His method of defence is unlikely to change from the strategy he has employed in the past — using delaying tactics that would have tested even Job, if he’d been on the bench. The now infamous Stalingrad way — tedious and tendentious, and wearying to the law and the public alike — can be expected to feature on his legal battlefield.
All of this is underpinned by a seemingly endless budget for legal fees. Even when the state closed its money taps, it did not stop Zuma from pressing on.
In what is perhaps a peak irony, Zuma lost an appeal in April last year over who should foot his legal bills. He had sought to overturn a high court order declaring him liable for fees of R25m that at first had been paid by the state. Following that ruling, Zuma needed to reimburse the state. No-one, aside from his inner circle, knows the source of his resources.
The bills piled up when the appeal court handed down its order, with costs, saying that Zuma had made claims with “reckless disregard for the truth” and that he had criticised the judiciary in a manner “plainly deserving of censure”. Precisely how much Zuma’s litigation has cost the state over decades remains a mystery; amounts in the tens of millions presented to parliament and reflected in court submissions show only piecemeal sums in a handful of matters. More recently, Zuma has called on the public for financial support. Zuma’s foundation’s Twitter handle has repeatedly shared banking details, asking for money. Perhaps taking a cue from other retired world leaders, Zuma published a book,
Zuma Speaks: The Words of a President, in early December. Social media posts about the book spread on official platforms and included banking details. Zuma is now a member of a dubious club of former world leaders facing court censure. Some, like Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, could legitimately claim persecution, but not so much others: Netanyahu, Malaysia’s Najib Razak, and Trump.
The most recent of Zuma’s court matters relates to former prisons boss Arthur Fraser’s controversial decision to release him on medical parole early into the second month of his sentence last year. Zuma is now in his fourth month of medical parole, but if the high court order he
disputes withstands his appeal, he will be liable to serve the remainder of his 15 months behind bars for contempt of court.
The high court order he is challenging insists that Zuma’s time being “sick” at home does not count towards the completion of his sentence.
On December 21 last year he was granted leave to appeal against the high court decision. It will be heard at the Supreme Court of Appeal. The court’s first term begins in mid-February. A date has yet to be set for the Zuma matter.
Zuma launched his application for leave to appeal on December 15 after the South Gauteng High Court made the order sending him back to jail. Judge Keoagile Elias Matojane found Fraser’s parole an “unlawful intervention”.
The second and longer-standing
matter pertains to Zuma’s role in the arms deal of the 1990s, in which he is alleged to have received about 700 payments. He has pleaded not guilty to various charges, among them corruption, fraud, tax evasion and racketeering, alongside his co-accused, French arms manufacturer Thales.
Against all this legal background loom darker forces. Within days of beginning his 15-month sentence for contempt in the Estcourt jail in July, the country underwent what
President Cyril
Ramaphosa described as a failed insurrection.
More than 300 people died in that civil unrest and
Ramaphosa deployed 25,000 troops in KwaZulu-Natal and
Gauteng — the provinces that were hardest hit — to deal with it.
Zuma alleged he was the first prisoner of the Constitutional
Court. He likened the court’s decision to apartheid-era detention without trial, and claimed he had been issued an effective death sentence.
With ANC leaders walking a tightrope between party and state, swift and decisive progress of both Zuma’s cases in 2022 is paramount. But there are other cases too.
In the background is acting chief justice Raymond Zondo’s report, recommending prosecutions of some of Zuma’s closest collaborators in state capture.
It will not be enough for Zuma to face only the contempt charge. There are more serious charges associated with state capture, as already reflected in only one part of the report (which hasn’t even got to the real meaty stuff, such as the abuse of intelligence and law and order agencies).
The former president’s time in the dock this year will certainly happen, and soon, but many are beginning to wonder whether the accomplices named in Zondo’s report will suffer the same fate.
Exactly how much Zuma’s litigation has cost the state over decades remains a mystery
“Queen Elizabeth II is the royal family’s heat shield. When she is gone they’re going to be very vulnerable.”
Graham Smith, leader of Republic, Britain’s main antimonarchist group. He made the remark in the context of the scandal involving Prince Andrew, the queen’s second son, who is ninth in line to the throne.