Embattled South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma was welcomed in the National Assembly with a standing ovation by his African National Congress MPs on Wednesday afternoon.
The almost empty House, which was scheduled to consider questions to the deputy president — a standard procedure — began sitting at 3pm.
Zuma slipped through a side entrance of Parliament from the presidential office, Tuynhuys, evading journalists who were waiting for him in the lobby area of the National Assembly. He appeared just minutes after Judge Hillary Squires sentenced Zuma’s financial adviser Schabir Shaik in the Durban High Court to an effective 15 years in jail on corruption and fraud charges.
Soon after parliamentary proceedings began, official opposition chief whip Douglas Gibson asked whether Zuma would resign as deputy president — but Speaker Baleka Mbete said this was “out of order”.
She said she had received an application for a substantive motion — apparently calling on the deputy president to resign — and she was “not allowing you [Gibson]” to dwell on his line of argument. She was considering the substantive motion, she said.
Asked by official opposition leader Tony Leon whether Zuma, as leader of the moral regeneration campaign, is investigating allegations that the ruling party received R11-million in funding from state oil company PetroSA, the deputy president said Leon should take the matter to “existing state agencies” that are charged with the responsibility of investigating such matters.
Zuma said in reply to a follow-up question that it is not a matter for the moral regeneration movement — which he chairs — but emphasised that whenever there have been allegations of corruption in South Africa, the government has not stood in the way.
“It [the government] has acted. It has never interfered,” he said.
Last week, Judge Squires found there was a “generally corrupt” relationship between the deputy president and Shaik. The trial linked R1,2-million in loans to Zuma by Shaik with South Africa’s controversial multibillion-rand arms deal.
Zuma did not mention the Shaik case at all during answers to various questions on Wednesday afternoon. His party has repeatedly said that he has not been charged with a crime and has not had his day in court. — I-Net Bridge