AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER
FORMER South African President Jacob Zuma again launched a scathing attack on the judiciary and the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land.
In a statement issued hours after the Constitutional Court heard a case against him in his absence, Zuma said he had lost faith in the courts.
“Ordinarily and if I had faith that a South African court would consider my submissions, I would present them to the Constitutional Court. However, my experience is that many South African judges, including those of the Constitutional Court, can no longer bring an open mind to cases involving me as they have done in awarding costs against me in a case I had not participated in.
“It is a travesty of justice to observe how the Constitutional Court has allowed itself to be abused in this manner and the repeated warning I have made in the regard continue to go unheard simply because they emanate from me. The truth is that the (Zondo) Commission approached the Constitutional Court directly to compel me to appear on the grounds that the Commission was running out of time and that approaching a lower court, as is correct legal procedure, would have caused delays that would have affected the timelines around which the Commission needs to finish its work,” Zuma said.
The former president, who appointed the Commission of Inquiry into state capture, also laid into the commission.
He said: “What the Constitutional Court failed to appreciate is that in rescuing the Commission from its own inefficiencies and incompetence, the Constitutional Court chose to prejudice me and violate my constitutional rights by being the court of first and last instance by circumventing my right to normal due process of having the judicial decision of a lower court remaining subject to review by a higher court. The fact is the Commission has failed to regulate its own costs and processes in allowing itself to waste time pursuing to all sorts of evidence under the sun that has nothing to do with their terms of reference. In addition to that, the Commission has never been truthful about its own efficiencies that include hiring expensive premises with extravagant extras and over staffing with expensive investigators and legal personnel that caused the Commission to grossly exceed it initial allocated budget.”
Yesterday, lawyers representing the Zondo commission made a compelling case in the Constitutional Court on why Zuma should be jailed for two years for ignoring an order from the country’s highest court.
Presenting the commission’s case, Advocate Themba Ngcukaitobi catalogued Zuma’s failure to comply with the orders from the commission, chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
Ngcukaitobi said not only has Zuma failed to comply with the Constitutional Court order but he has also not attended the commission and failed to submit, as required, affidavits to answer to allegations against him. In his failure to comply, he has also adopted a belligerent and defiant tone,” he submitted.
Ngcukaitobi submitted that Deputy Judge President Zondo and the Constitutional Court became targets of Zuma’s “angry, threatening and quite frankly, provocative tirades’ ‘ after they ruled against him in separate matters. Zondo ruled against an application for his recusal and the Constitutional Court ordered Zuma to appear and testify before the Zondo Commission.
He argued that there were strong reasons why Zuma should be imprisoned and not fined. Zuma, Ngcukaitobi submitted, had committed multiple acts of contempt against the commission.
He described Zuma’s acts as a cynical manoeuvre to avoid accountability.
In response to a question by Justice Tshiqi, Ngcukaitobi said there was no alternative to the custodial sentence sought by the commission.
He also argued that the court had to take into account a pattern reflected in Zuma’s tactics.
Justice Leana Theron asked Ngcukaitobi whether Zuma was not entitled to criticize the Constitutional Court. In his response, Ngcukaitobi said Zuma was entitled to his freedom of speech but not to launch false and malevolently motivated attacks against the court and members of the judiciary.
“There is no one who is entitled to insult, falsely and untruthfully, the Constitutional Court. Everyone is entitled to say the judgments do not follow the law. But there is no one who is entitled to say that the judges have abandoned their green robes. No one is entitled to say that some judges have received money from Mr Ramaphosa . No one is entitled to say that the Constitutional Court has become a threat to democracy. No one is entitled to say that the judgement of the Constitutional Court mimics the posture that has been adopted by the commission, which is designed to make unfair judgments against Mr Zuma,” Ngcukaitobi said.
The court reserved judgement and adjourned to consider the case made by the Zondo Commission. Zuma was not represented at the hearing.
