Woe is me! Serial victim Jacob Zuma now wants to indulge the court

Edward Zuma, former president Jacob Zuma's oldest son outside the Nkandla homestead in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday 2 July 2021. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

By Des Erasmus

3 Jul 2021

In his latest attempt to thwart Lady Justice, former president Jacob Zuma has tried to portray himself as a pious man whose only vices have been that he may have accepted poor legal advice, is of ill health, and suffers financial constraints because his state-sponsored legal fees have been halted.

Supporters of former president Jacob Zuma outside his Nkandla homestead on Friday, 2 July 2021, in KwaZulu-Natal. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

The former president on Friday filed urgent applications in the Constitutional Court and Pietermaritzburg High Court, seeking that the latter issue a stay of his arrest pending the outcome of the appeal to the apex court to reconsider and rescind the judgment in which he was found in contempt and sentenced to 15 months' direct imprisonment.

Zuma has also distanced himself from statements released by his eponymous foundation in which attacks have been made against the judiciary, including a misogynistic swipe at Justice Sisi Khampepe.

The ConCourt, in a majority judgment, found Zuma guilty of contempt on Tuesday for disobeying its order that he appear before the Zondo Commission to answer allegations from scores of witnesses about his role in State Capture.

Zuma has until Sunday to hand himself over to police. Should he not, the SAPS will have three days in which to arrest him and take him to Durban’s Westville Correctional Facility. His application to the Pietermaritzburg High Court to have his arrest warrant stayed or interdicted is set down for Tuesday.

In his founding affidavit, Zuma did not miss the opportunity to again insinuate political conspiracy, claiming that one of the ConCourt judges in the majority judgment, Acting Justice Dhaya Pillay, “was conflicted”, having already ruled against him in his ongoing criminal trial, and claimed that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan “my political enemy…responsible for the so-called Zuma Must Go movement” attempted to influence her appointment to higher office.

Should the ConCourt reject his application, Zuma is alternatively seeking that it “directs that I am given the proper opportunity to present evidence in relation to the question of whether direct imprisonment is an appropriate remedy for the crime of contempt of court”.

A general view of members of the media outside former president Jacob Zuma's Nkandla homestead on Friday, 2 July 2021, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. According to reports, journalists were intimidated and threatened by MKMVA members after questioning their disregard for Covid-19 protocols during a media briefing earlier in the day. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

A general view of former president Jacob Zuma's Nkandla homestead on Friday, 2 July 2021, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

MKMVA spokesperson Carl Niehaus addresses the media outside Zuma's Nkandla homestead on Friday, 2 July 2021, in KwaZulu-Natal. The Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans' Association press briefing took place outside Zuma's homestead where Niehaus reiterated that they would not allow Zuma to be imprisoned. 'We have warned that if President Zuma is going to be imprisoned that there will be instability and unrest in SA,' he said. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

Zuma, who has deliberately failed to defend himself before the ConCourt and to appear before the commission while under summons, now states that he always wanted to appear before the commission, headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, but that the dates coincided with his medical examinations.

In characteristic refrain, he states that the current state of affairs is largely because Zondo is biased. He states in his affidavit that when he left the Zondo Commission last year without permission – and in so breached the Commissions Act – it was because he had to take medication, and because there was a communication lag between his legal team and Zondo, which was not adequately conveyed by his lawyers.

As for his thoughts on the commission: “Let me state what my attitude towards the commission is. I do not believe that it was established in terms of the Constitution and, at the right time, that issue will be the albatross around the neck of its legitimacy.”

He said he hoped that his ConCourt application would not be regarded as “another afront to the court”. He had been recently advised, he said, that “before I walk through the prison doors to serve my sentence as the first direct prisoner of the Constitutional Court under our constitutional democracy” it would “not be futile” to ask the court to relook at its decision.

“I approach the Honourable Court dreading the prospect that in dealing with this application against its seminal and unprecedented judgment on summary imprisonment without trial for contempt of court, I do trust that it will be able to dig from the depth of its judicial being, to extract the requisite calmness and restraint, and to adjudicate my application solely based on its legal merits.

“Given my own unstable health,” he says, he is entitled to the matter being re-examined to decide if the imprisonment order “does not violate the constitutional rights it is enjoined to protect”.

The former president said the court made the “erroneous assumption” that he was behind the statements made by his foundation.

“I am a 79-year-old man who suffers from a medical condition that requires constant and intense therapy and attention. In the event that the court is persuaded that I should be given a proper opportunity to deal with the issue of imprisonment, my state of health would also form part of the many other reasons why I should not be imprisoned, more particularly in the current context of a deadly pandemic to which people in my circumstances are particularly vulnerable and at the highest risk of death.”

Zuma said his imprisonment would not serve “any constitutional value but may be a political statement of exemplary punishment”.

He paints himself as a law-abiding citizen.

“There is no other human being in this country who has attended to and respected our courts with such frequency and consistency as I have done in the past 20 years or so. I have never and will never treat our courts with contempt.”

Edward Zuma, former president Jacob Zuma's oldest son, outside the Nkandla homestead in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday, 2 July 2021. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

Zuma said his reasons for not engaging the application of the commission to the ConCourt were based in large part on his “lack of finances”.

However, he doubled down on his attacks against the judiciary, stating he was entitled to his opinion, whether it was right or wrong, and that he should not be imprisoned for holding one.

Zuma sent a letter to Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng in April wherein he said that he would not file an affidavit in the contempt hearing, calling the matter “a sham”, and saying that the Zondo Commission was “controlled by his political foes”.

“It is abundantly clear, on any reading of the majority judgment, that the nature and severity of the sentence was greatly, if not totally, influenced by the material contained in the hearsay evidence of the statements which were issued by the Jacob Zuma Foundation in the aftermath of the first judgment of the Constitutional Court."

The former president said the court made the “erroneous assumption” that he was behind the statements made by his foundation.

“This unprecedented and cruel regime has therefore been custom-made and specifically designed for me because it is statistically impossible that in the future, another Head of State who is almost 80 years old will be forced to appear before a chairperson of a commission who is accused of bias and conflict of interests. Only Jacob Zuma will fit that bill.”

He said that if the court fails to accept his grounds to have the judgment rescinded, then it ought to “exercise its discretion” for the purpose to hear mitigation “in particular in relation to my developing health situation”. DM

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