According to a medical certificate signed by the military’s Brigadier General MZ Mdutywa, former president Jacob Zuma’s legal travails and recent imprisonment delayed urgently needed treatment for an injury he suffered last year. (Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
Former president Jacob Zuma has run out of legal road to avoid testifying before the Zondo commission after Thursday’s Constitutional Court order that was handed down as the narrative of grand corruption he faces took a compelling turn into spy novel territory.
In a ruling read out by Justice Chris Jafta, the court ordered Zuma to respect all summonses served by the commission and to answer all questions put to him, save where he can justify resorting to the privilege against self-incrimination.
It included a stinging reminder to Zuma that South Africa is a constitutional democracy in which everyone is equal before the law and ordered him to pay the commission’s costs in the matter.
The big question mark over Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s approach to the court had been whether it would grant the commission direct access. It did so, Jafta said, because it was in the interest of the whole country, not just the commission, that Zuma should testify.
“It is ironic that the directives were issued in terms of regulations made by the former president himself under the authority of the Commissions Act, the commission itself was established by him in terms of the constitution; it is, therefore, unacceptable that he is the one who frustrates its investigation,” Jafta said.
“We must remember that this is a republic of laws where the constitution reigns supreme. The former president’s conduct is a direct breach of the rule of law.”
Zuma’s legal team did not immediately respond to the ruling. It deprives them of the argument made to the commission on 15 January that Zuma would not heed a summons to appear the next week because it was not binding pending the judgment.
Political analyst Steven Friedman said he thought Zuma would “probably” take the stand from 15 February, as per the second summons, but experience “memory lapses”.
“The only certain thing is that if anybody expects Zuma to answer all questions fully, it is not going to happen,” Friedman said.
The Constitutional Court faulted the commission for long showing Zuma leniency by initially inviting rather than summonsing him to appear, until its lifespan was near its end.
Jafta said: “Quite clearly, the commission is to blame for the situation it found itself in.”
The commission turned to the court at the 11th hour in December, after Zuma left the sitting in which Zondo dismissed the former president’s demand that he recuse himself. Zuma’s inner circle have claimed that he met with Zondo directly afterwards in chambers and offered to answer questions in a private meeting in a hotel suite to avoid public humiliation.
Commission secretary Itumeleng Mosala has denied any such meeting, noting that Zuma would have been captured on camera had he entered Zondo’s office.
“If anybody watches the commission’s proceedings of 19 November 2020, they will not see Mr Zuma walking towards the door that leads to the chairman’s chambers.”
Zuma’s exit, which was in breach of section 6(1) of the Commissions Act was broadcast on live television, and serves as evidence for the Hawks in a contempt charge still hanging over the former president.
This week’s testimony
The past week’s testimony on abuses at the State Security Agency (SSA) told of an intelligence community that had, at the highest level, become subservient to the personality cult of a paranoid president, and adds to the 36 times witnesses had implicated him to date.
Acting SSA director general Loyiso Jafta suggested that the merger of the national and foreign intelligence services in 2009 paved the way for national security to become confused with that of the head of state.
Jafta said he had “followed the money” in investigating what happened over the next nine years and found funds were poured into factional battles in the ANC to discredit political foes.
Then intelligence minister David Mahlobo authorised the release of R80-million in cash to operatives in the run-up to the ANC’s leadership contest at Nasrec; the African news Agency was co-opted for counter-intelligence purposes and, according to the director general, there was strong circumstantial evidence that a sitting judge was bribed.
Jafta reasoned that Zuma may not have been aware of breaches committed by agents eager to please him. But it is less plausible that he did not know that SSA had unlawfully detained one of his wives, Nompumelelo Ntuli, on suspicion of poisoning him. This would be, Zondo commented, “very serious” if true.
Much of what the commission heard over the past week has been public since the release of a report by a high-level review panel, headed by Sydney Mufamadi, in March 2019.
But having Mufamadi and Jafta testify reads it into the record of the commission’s work. It also allows the legal team to question Zuma on his role and Zondo to include the abuse of intelligence structures, at an alleged cost of R9-billion in missing assets, in his findings, as well as recommend that the criminal justice system delve further.
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