Africa-Press – South-Africa. Johannesburg: A defiant former president Jacob Zuma has hit back at the judiciary following the hearing of the commission of inquiry into state capture’s Constitutional Court application to have him jailed for contempt of court.
Zuma was responding to the commission’s arguments in the Constitutional Court on Thursday. Its senior counsel, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, said the ex-president should be jailed without the option of a fine for waging a political campaign against the judiciary based on lies. Ngcukaitobi rejected the Helen Suzman Foundation’s suggestion that Zuma should be jailed but be hauled before the commission with the help of the sheriff of the high court.
Zuma said his criticism of the commission and the judiciary, saying the inclusion of Acting Justice Dhaya Pillay in the hearing was “curious considering the historical hostility and insults” against him.
Justice Pillay was appointed to the Constitutional Court in an acting capacity last month and is one of the candidates for the vacancies in the apex court.
Zuma said Acting Justice Pillay has previously described him as a “wedge driver with a poisonous tongue” after she issued a warrant of arrest for failing to appear before her in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, because the ex-president was receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness in Cuba.
He said the Constitutional Court had allowed itself to be abused and that he was rescuing it from its own inefficiencies and incompetence.
He maintained his stance that the apex court was prejudicing him and violating his constitutional rights.
Zuma said the commission peddled lies and misrepresentations at the apex court. Its Constitutional Court case was a “scheme to ignore and sidestep the serious issues” he raised in his application to have its chairperson, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, recuse himself.
In his application, Zuma accused Justice Zondo of lying about meeting him and that the country’s second-most senior judge could not adjudicate his own matter.
“It is no longer my attendance that they seek but they have joined the political campaign to destroy me. It also reveals that this was always the commission’s mandate,” said Zuma.
He said Justice Zondo was “exploiting his proximity to the Constitutional Court to protect and advance his own interests as chairperson of the commission”.
The ex-president said he was entitled not to participate in the apex court proceedings against him instituted by the commission.
Zuma said his review application against Justice Zondo’s refusal to recuse himself had been deliberately ignored because the facts do not support his (Justice Zondo’s) desired finding against him.
His stance did not amount to a constitutional crisis but a “conscientious objection to the conduct of certain senior members of the judiciary”.
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Political Bureau
