JZ lays blame at NPA door

‘Ngcuka did not want me to clear my name in court’

Former president Jacob Zuma says the state chose not to charge him for corruption with his former financial advisor Schabir Shaik because then prosecutions head Bulelani Ngcuka feared he would be exonerated.

“Ngcuka did not want me to clear my name in a court of law then,” Zuma argues in an affidavit filed earlier this month.

“For if I was exonerated in the Shaik case, it would mean that I was free permanently and could not be recharged.”

Ngcuka went against the recommendations of his own prosecutors by deciding that while there may be a prima facie case against Zuma, it was not necessarily a winnable case. He therefore elected not to put Zuma on trial with Shaik 15 years ago.

That decision is one of Zuma’s biggest targets in his battle to permanently stave off racketeering, fraud, corruption and tax evasion prosecution, which has dominated headlines and spawned multiple legal challenges over the past 17 years.

Apart from arguing that the case should be stopped because of the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) “undue delays” in both charging him and putting him on trial, the former president insists the case against him has been fatally tainted by political interference and prosecutorial irregularities.

Pivotal to his case is his argument that the state used its prosecution of Shaik as a “dry run” for its legal pursuit of him, thereby effectively robbing him of the opportunity to cross-examine the man later convicted and sentenced to 15 years behind bars for corrupting him.

“The prejudice of not charging me with Shaik meant that the NPA was continuing with the investigation without me being aware and was testing the evidence in the Shaik trial so that it could be used against me later.”

It’s the state’s case that Shaik and his company Nkobi Holdings made 783 payments to Zuma, totalling more than R4m in the 10-year period between October 25 1995 and July 1 2005.

In return for these payments, the state claims Zuma abused his formal position as MEC and as deputy president of the ANC to do unlawful favours for Shaik and his firm.

The NPA will respond to Zuma’s accusations within the next two weeks.