Zuma, Trump legal teams hopeless

The US has Donald Trump. South Africa has Jacob Zuma. Both Trump and Zuma, narcissists to the core, are common in many ways, but chief among them is having weird legal representatives in Rudy Giuliani and Muzi Sikhakhane, respectively.

After losing the elections by six million votes, Trump tried 30 times to seek help from the courts, but lost in all of them bar one. Failing to disenfranchise millions of voters in Pennsylvania, the judge ruthlessly tossed out the Giuliani team’s lawsuit with the contempt it deserved.

In SA, Zuma tried for the umpteenth time to evade giving evidence at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture. He demanded the recusal of Judge Raymond Zondo, pictured, because of alleged friendship between the two, which would mysteriously prejudice Zuma.

Evidence leader Paul Pretorius reduced Zuma’s application to shreds. Sikhakhane took umbrage at Pretorius’ rebutt al of his clearly nonsensical argument.

Sikhakhane could not even raise a single legal argument to challenge Pretorius. He instead descended to the politicised claim that Pretorius was patronising and condescending. He substituted arrogance for sound legal argument.

He even ventured into sophomoric political science fiction.

But it was Zondo’s decision in responding to Zuma’ s application that revealed Sikhakhane’s defence of Zuma to be devoid of any legal substance that made Zuma and his team to disappear from the commission, like the preacher Shepherd Bushiri crossing our borders.

Trump still cannot see that regardless of how many Giulianis he hires (without pay, nogal) he is doomed not to win any court case.

Similarly, Zuma is blind to the fact that whatever bombs he can toss at the commission, there’s no sound legal argument that will convince higher courts that Zondo has erred in dismissing his application.

Prof Themba Sono

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