Shady spy tapes were path to the top
JACOB Zuma’s ascent to the most powerful position in South Africa was made possible by secretly intercepted telephone conversations.
Encrypted recordings of those conversations — some between former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy and former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka — effectively torpedoed a bid to prosecute Zuma in 2009.
The recordings surfaced, conveniently, prior to Zuma being tried on more than 700 charges including fraud, corruption, racketeering and money laundering related to an alleged arms deal bribe and his financial relationship with Schabir Shaik.
Journalist Adriaan Basson’s book, Zuma Exposed, offers a version of how the spy tapes came into existence.
The investigation of a gang boss led police crime intelligence to tap a cellphone used by McCarthy — coincidentally the man leading a probe into thenpolice chief Jackie Selebi and Zuma. At the time there was rivalry between the police and the Scorpions.
Richard Mdluli, a policeman who would later become the controversial head of police crime intelligence, obtained some of the recorded conversations that later ended up on the desk of Zuma’s lawyer, Michael Hulley.
Zuma’s defence team argued that the recordings exposed a political conspiracy to prevent him becoming president. They hinted at McCarthy being a Thabo Mbeki loyalist who discussed charging Zuma around the time of the ANC’s national conference in Polokwane in 2007.
The recordings allowed Zuma to use another successful tactic — legal procedure — to hamstring his opponents.
Advocate Mokotedi Mpshe, former acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority, said although the spy tapes did not taint Zuma’s prosecution, they tainted the legal process around it.
“I have come to the difficult conclusion that it is neither possible nor desirable for the NPA to continue with the prosecution of Mr Zuma,” Mpshe said on April 6 2009. National elections were held 16 days later and Zuma became the president of South Africa.
But evidence of this political conspiracy, the actual recordings, have not been made public despite two court orders instructing the NPA to do so.
The DA wants a judicial review of Mpshe’s 2009 decision to drop the charges, but it needs the records, including the recordings or transcripts, before this could happen. Hulley, according to Business Day, quoting a parliamentary reply from the presidency, had by late last year been paid R2.3-million by the state in legal fees to block the release of the tapes.
Zuma was also quick to turn to the courts in a bid to erase The Spear, a satirical painting by artist Brett Murray that depicted him in a Lenin-like pose with his genitals exposed.
The image sharply divided opinion.
It turned into a fiery debate about dignity, cultural values, race, freedom of expression, threats of violence and calls for a boycott of City Press newspaper. Zuma tried to have the public barred from viewing the image, arguing that it impugned his “dignity in the eyes of all who see it”.
The painting was defaced during the legal wrangle, resulting in a settlement between the ANC and the Goodman Gallery, which agreed not to display it.