Our website use cookies to improve and personalize your experience and to display advertisements (if any). Our website may also include cookies from third parties like Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Youtube. By using the website, you consent to the use of cookies.

When standing in the dock is more important than a conviction

SOUTH Africa has had several historic moments in her 27 years of democracy. 

However, as these historic moments go, the moment former president Jacob Zuma stood up in the dock in the high court in Pietermaritzburg and pleaded, deserves a special place.

Dressed in a blue three-piece suit and a red tie, stood up, removed his Covid-19 mask, looked at Judge Piet Koen and said: “I plead not guilty.”

With those words, Zuma marked an important milestone, once sending a message to South Africans that his trial, delayed for over 17 years, is now officially underway. This moment also sent a powerful message that every citizen, despite their positions in politics and government or their influence in society, is equal before the law. 

Advertisements

Unusually for an accused in a court of law, Zuma was allowed to sit, but perhaps it was because he is 79 years-old, as the lead prosecutor Billy Downer read the charges against him. 

As Downer went methodically through the charges against Zuma and Thales, the French arms manufacturer accused of bribing him, Zuma listened attentively, scribbled notes.  

Zuma pleaded not guilty to corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering charges relating to a multi-billion arms deal when he was deputy president.

Zuma, who was president between 2009-2018, faces 18 charges relating to the 1999 deal. He has rejected the charges and says he is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt by a rival faction of the ruling ANC.

READ:  Zuma decision set for October 26

The historic day was one that many South Africans thought would never come. After 17 years of all sorts of delays, there was, understandably so, lots of doubt whether Zuma would get his day in court.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, Zuma has done all he could to make sure that events that unfolded in the Pietermaritzburg High Court do not take place. 

It is important to note that Zuma remains innocent and that Downer and the prosecution team have to convince and prove his guilt. 

Zuma, on the other hand will have to explain to the court why he received over R4.7-million from Shaik, over R3-million from Thales and why he did not disclose the payments to Parliament, Cabinet and to the South African Revenue Services. That, in the main, is what Zuma, after he has navigated his attempt to have Downer removed, has to deal with. 

However, to see a politically powerful and politically connected individual in the form of a former president of South Africa in court, is a significant statement that the rule of law exists. This is the same message South Africa got when then President Nelson Mandela stood in the high court in Pretoria after rugby leader Louis Luyt took him to court.

The message of equality before the law is important for South Africa, a country that finds itself in the middle of massive corruption scandals, some exposed at the Zondo judicial commission and some are in our courts after being discovered by The Hawks and the Special Investigations Unit.

READ:  Court grants Zuma postponement

It’s been a long journey from that fateful day in 2005 when Shaik was convicted, jailed and Zuma was fired from his job as deputy president of SA. 

Advertisements

The matter has survived five successors to Advocate Bulelani Ngcuka, the then National Director of Prosecutions who declined to charge Zuma alongside Shaik because the case was not winnable in court. The decision raised eyebrows as the corruptor, Shaik, was convicted and jailed while the alleged corruptee, Zuma, was not charged.

The legal twist and turns in the matter started in 2006, after Zuma was charged with corruption, Judge Herbert Msimang, sitting in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, struck the matter off the roll but did not grant a permanent stay of prosecution.

In 2007, the Scorpions indicted Zuma to stand trial on racketeering, money laundering, fraud and corruption charges. A year later, Judge Chris Nicholson found that the charges were unlawful because Zuma was not given an opportunity to make representations and that political interference had played a role in the decision by the NPA to charge him. 

The matter took a dramatic twist in 2016 when the Pretoria High Court found that  the decision to drop the charges was irrational. Zuma appealed the matter and a year later the Supreme Court upheld the judgement. In 2018, the charges were reinstated by then NDPP, Shaun Abrahams. 

Zuma has maintained, through the long and winding road that ended at the Pietermaritzburg Court, that the case against him is political, he now has a chance to prove this in a court of law, where evidence and nothing else matters.

READ:  ‘Intelligence paid Zuma R2.5 to R4.5-million per month’

No matter what Judge Piet Koen decides at the end of the trial, the powerful message that ours is a constitutional democracy where the rule of law is king and that everyone is equal before the law, has been sent.

Advertisements
By The African Mirror

MORE FROM THIS SECTION