Africa-Press – South-Africa. Former president Jacob Zuma is expected to give his supporters a shoutout on the sidelines of the showdown between himself, prosecutor Billy Downer SC and News24 specialist legal writer Karyn Maughan at the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg on Monday.
“I can confirm his excellency will be in court,” said Mzwanele Manyi, who provides updates on Zuma to the media and via his Twitter account for the Jacob Zuma Foundation.
“He is going to thank them,” Manyi told News24 in a whirlwind round of media interviews on Sunday. Manyi trumpeted the end of Zuma’s sentence on Friday with a post describing the former president as a “FREEMAN”.
Zuma’s court appearance usually attracts hundreds of supporters who believe he is being persecuted, from the rape trial where he was acquitted, to the multitude of appearances for the stop-start corruption trial he and military system manufacturer Thales face.
On Friday, Zuma completed his 15-month sentence for contempt of court for walking out of the State Capture Commission of Inquiry.
He was sentenced on 29 June last year and left his home in Nkandla in a speedy convoy to start serving his sentence at the eleventh hour on 7 July 2021.
After two months in prison in Estcourt, he was granted medical parole in a move met with cynicism by some quarters.
His medical condition came up again during his special plea to the court last year, that Downer be declared as having no title to prosecute him, because Zuma argued he would not get a fair trial with Downer at the helm of the case.
If successful, he wanted to be acquitted of the corruption charges related to a multibillion-rand military weapons upgrade deal. He was alleged to have received gratifications from his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik to promote Shaik’s business interests while Zuma was MEC for economic development, and was allegedly bribed by Thales for protection during the investigation into the country’s multibillion-rand military upgrade.
The corruption case has dogged Zuma for a decade and has often sent South Africa’s politics into a state of turmoil. He was first charged in December 2007, while still on a high after being elected ANC president. Just before he was inaugurated as head of state in 2009, the charges were withdrawn on the grounds of political interference, apparently captured in secret recordings saved on what became known as the “spy tapes”.
After a revolving door of National Directors of Public Prosecutions, he was charged again in 2018, and his trial was due to start in May 2021. He and Thales have pleaded not guilty.
One of the latest reasons for delays, was a special plea application against Downer, the head prosecutor in the case. This was postponed and was finally supposed to be dealt with on 10 August 2021.
On 9 August, presiding Judge Piet Koen was notified that three days earlier Zuma had been taken to a hospital in Pretoria as a patient of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) Presidential Medical Unit.
This meant Zuma would not be present for the special plea case. Zuma’s lawyers had fought for him to be present, rejecting a proposed online hearing that Koen had arranged in the light of Covid-19, and possible disruptions related to the July unrest.
A postponement was sought by the defence, and a letter from a military doctor was submitted to support the new development on Zuma’s health.
This was reported on, and Zuma laid a complaint about Downer allegedly illegally leaking medical information to Maughan about his medical status.
Zuma alleges the pair violated the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Act by sharing the information without written permission, a crime punishable by a 15-year jail sentence.
The NPA refused to prosecute Downer and issued a nolle prosequi certificate – a legal document required to institute a private prosecution. This opened the way for Zuma to launch a private prosecution against Downer and Maughan over the medical information.
On Monday, Maughan intends to apply to have the case against her dismissed because the NPA did not issue a nolle prosequi for her.
She argues that the summons issued against her by Zuma’s legal team is also a gross abuse of court processes and, therefore, should be set aside.
She denies using leaked information as Zuma claims, saying the information was contained in a public document and was pertinent to the case.
She says in her court papers:
In her application, she includes correspondence between herself and Zuma’s lawyer Dali Mpofu SC, where Mpofu also shares court papers with her.
She reiterated that she requested and obtained the court papers from prosecutor Andrew Breitenbach, not Downer, something she has already sworn to in an affidavit.
Zuma wants her application to have his application dismissed and set aside.
He said in his papers that he had been under medical care since 28 November 2020 after suffering a traumatic injury.
He argues that, given his status as a former president, such confidential medical information was sensitive and automatically classified.
He said he also wanted to spare his family undue anxiety over his health until they could hear from him personally.
“I intended to do so only when the conditions were right and on my own terms, not those dictated by others. Until then, I elected to downplay the seriousness of my condition, especially to the children.”
He argued that medical information was generally treated as prima facie confidential and in the case of a former head of state, “it should be incontestable that the levels of confidentiality are invariably heightened”.
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