Cape Town — Infighting within the ranks of South Africa's ruling African National Congress has led to prosecutors dropping charges of corruption, fraud, money-laundering and tax evasion against Jacob Zuma, the party leader who is due to become the country's president after elections later this month.
The acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Mokotedi Mpshe, announced in a televised news conference in Pretoria on Monday that he was abandoning the prosecution of Zuma because the NPA's top investigator was suspected of manipulating the timing of the case against Zuma in late 2007.
The investigator, Leonard McCarthy, had held a series of telephone conversations with a former NPA head, Bulelani Ngcuka - who had no longer worked for the NPA - in which the two had discussed the timing of bringing charges against Zuma in the weeks leading up to his highly-contested election as party leader.
Ncguka is regarded as a supporter of former president Thabo Mbeki - who lost the leadership election against Zuma. The charges Zuma faced were brought after his election.
Mpshe said McCarthy's conversations amounted to a "serious abuse of process" in which attempts were made to manipulate the case for "collateral and illicit purposes". Referring to newspaper reports in the past week saying that Mbeki had also spoken to McCarthy, Mpshe said he could find no evidence that Mbeki was involved in the manipulation.
However, he made it clear that the NPA still believed it had a strong case against Zuma. He said the team of prosecutors who prepared the case had recommended that it go forward and that a court should decide on whether the abuse had been serious enough to vitiate the charges.
But Mpshe overruled the team. He said he had made a number of court affidavits denying political motives for the case against Zuma. "I [now] feel personally wronged and betrayed... Like Caesar's wife, the prosecution must be above any trace of suspicion."
Recordings of the phone conversations were given to the NPA by Zuma's defence team. Mpshe said the NPA had established that the recordings had been made in telephone taps carried out by South Africa's National Intelligence Agency (NIA). He said they had been made legally, but did not explain how they had come into the hands of Zuma's lawyers.
Since coming to power in 1994, the ANC has employed a policy of "deploying" loyal party members such as Ngcuka to key posts in South Africa's civil service - including the prosecuting authority, the police and intelligence agencies.
In the charges against Zuma, the NPA alleged that in the decade between 1995 and 2005, Zuma received 783 payments totalling R4 million (about U.S. $400,000 at today's exchange rate) from his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik.
Shaik was convicted and jailed on corruption and fraud charges in 2005. Mbeki responded by firing Zuma as deputy president of the country. Shaik was recently released in suspect circumstances on medical parole.
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Come on guys, let be realistic here. This was a nice try by the NPA, but they have to do better than this, and realize that there are intelligent people out there. This McCarthy person did not work from an island. There are checks and balances in the NPA, especially for a case of this sensitivity. To turn around now and say it was all McCarthy's fault is a lets-play-all-people-out-there-are-fools game by the NPA. I just wonder what motivation they gave McCarthy to take the fall, and whether he knew what was at stake by agreeing to take the fall. He has to be very careful indeed, because the NPA has tried very hard here, and probably succeeded, in directing all JZ supportes' hatred toward him. He should realize there are lots of fanatics in that group, and seriously lay low for now, for his own sake and that of his family.
While this might seem like a sweet victory for the ANC, one must be careful and realize that it might also deal a blow to their general elections campaign, especially amongst the "intellectual" voters. The ANC must now focus on the not-so-learned voters (common man in street) segment of the voters, because it is just too late to do any damage control to what this NPA announcement has done to the "intellectual" segment of the voters. Needless to say, the best strategy for JZ to win all potentail voters would have been to prove his innocence in court well before these coming general elections. Of course we will always wonder if he could have achieved that in court.
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Simple legal doctrines eviscerate your juvenile and legally innocent 'arguments'.
First, you should be instructed or, less polemically, INFORMED that in a common law jurisdiction, which the Republic of South Africa is, it is never the burden of any defendant to "prove his innocence" in a court of law.
Given the vast powers of the prosecutorial branch of the judiciary, given its ample and overwhelming legal and material resources, it is black letter law that it is the prosecution's burden to PROVE the guilt of a defendant in a criminal case beyond a "reasonable doubt."
Now, this proof does not begin in court. And, this is where the rubber hits the road in the ALLEGED case against the President of the ANC, Cde. Jacob Zuma.
Recently, the CONVICTION of a former Senator from Alaska, USA was overturned by the USA's Attorney General, Eric Holder, on the exclusive ground that the prosecution, the Government, intentionally withheld exculpatory evidence from the Senator's defense lawyers.
The Senator's conviction was overturned, to make the point at a higher level of legal abstraction, because of PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT.
There is no PROCEDURAL difference between the Senator's case and Cde. Zuma's case, if a case it was.
First and last, there was patent prosecutorial misconduct. Unarguably, the conduct of the prosecutor was reprehensible, but that is a moral judgment without teeth.
He should be DISBARRED. An attorney cannot betray the confidence of his or her client, here the people of South Africa, to anyone, including a judge, unless the client waves the right by direct or indirect words or deeds.
There is no evidence that the people of South Africa waived the right.
And, if the "intellectual" voters fail to understand and denounce the massive mess that offed in this matter, then intellectuals they are not; ignoramuses, they would be.
Finally, the theory of democracy does not distinguish between "intellectual" and "non-intellectual" voters. This construction is antithetical to the spirit, if not the letter, of democracy: one man---and we add, one woman--- ONE VOTE, period and out.
Accordingly, erudition has nothing to do with the right to vote. A vote is a vote whether it is cast by an illiterate voter in Soweto or by an intellectual in the plush surburbs of Capetown.
We wish to congratulate Cde. Zuma on his legal victory, and we eagerly await his election as the President of Republic of South Africa, for the liberation struggle, which was hijacked by Mandela, must be RADICALIZED, must now resolve the LAND QUESTION in South Africa once and for all, lay it to rest with unequivocal finality.
Richersson88, you mention common law in South Africa and go on to cite a case in the USA; a genuine learned lawyer would not make an idiotic mistake like that. You want to impress people with your knowledge of law then do it properly, don't dishonor this profession with your amateurish arguments and presentations.
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