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South Africa: Judges, Lawyers Meet to Settle Zuma Trial Date
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
14 May 2008
Posted to the web 14 May 2008
Karima Brown
Johannesburg
PARTIES in the Jacob Zuma corruption case will meet KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala tomorrow to finalise a date for the African National Congress (ANC) president's first court appearance since he was charged by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) last December.
The meeting follows correspondence between Tshabalala and the province's deputy director of public prosecutions Anton Steynberg in which the judge president said he had not been consulted on the NPA's decision to set down the matter for August 4.
NPA spokesman Tlali Tlali said yesterday that the meeting would be an all-party affair, meaning that the defence team of Zuma and French Arms company Thint, which has to answer to charges of corruption and racketeering, and the NPA would likely finalise the start of the trial with Tshabalala.
Tlali said the NPA had copied Tshabalala in all of its correspondence to the defendants regarding its readiness to proceed on August 4 . But a letter last week from Tshabalala to Steynberg suggests that Tshabalala was not informed.
"While you allege that the matter was set down for August 4 2008, no arrangement was made with me and I have not had any contact with your office in this regard," the judge president said in his correspondence . He also said that the "date which you allocated was not by agreement with the other parties to the litigation".
In response to a question about why the NPA and Tshabalala held different views, Tlali said what seemed to have occurred was that "all the parties, us and the defendants , did not establish a convergence point on the proposed date".
He said no trial date could be agreed on if any one of the parties were "not ready" to proceed.
While it is practice that court dates for criminal trials are set by prosecutors, the procedure is that the deputy judge president, in consultation with the judge president, will make a number of judges available for criminal trials in a given court.
On Monday Tshabalala said the state had not consulted him on the date it had set down for Zuma's case to be heard. He said that in "high profile cases that could not be set down for one or two days" it was necessary that he be consulted.
While the state was ready to proceed, Tlali said Zuma's legal team had not come back to the NPA on the date they had set down for his trial. Lawyers for Thint said they would not be ready on August 4 , which could mean more delays.
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If the matter was not heard in August it could well be postponed for later this year or to next year, which could mean that Zuma either went on trial while campaigning as the ANC's presidential candidate or that the trial dragged on after he took office (assuming the ANC won the election). This w ould see SA's next president enter office facing criminal charges.
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