Deputy President Jacob Zuma has been battling for his political life for years, and his supporters believe he still has numerous ways to to take the fight to President Thabo Mbeki, writes Sam Sole.
“Schabir Shaik is only the instrument of the attack on Zuma,” a close associate of Zuma says.
Now the Zuma camp is readying its own instruments. One of the primary weapons in its fight-back strategy is the infamous letter to Gavin Woods, then chairperson of the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), signed by Zuma.
Zuma will argue — in court if necessary, and certainly in his political campaign — that he may have signed the letter, but did not write it.
The defence in the Shaik trial insisted that, far from protecting French arms company Thomson CSF (as required by the terms of the bribe agreement concluded between Zuma, Shaik and Thomson’s Alain Thetard), Zuma had, in fact, encouraged the investigation of the arms deal.
They claimed that he had backed Andrew Feinstein, at the time the African National Congress’s chief representative in Scopa, as well as others who wanted the deal probed.
But Judge Hillary Squires found: “A far more reliable guide to Jacob Zuma’s feelings about the Scopa recommendations is to be found in the letter he signed, if he did not write it himself, of 19 January 2001 to Mr Gavin Woods …”
The letter informed Woods of the decision by Mbeki to refuse to issue a proclamation that would have authorised the Special Investigation Unit, at the time headed by Judge Willem Heath, to begin a probe of the arms deal.
But the letter went much further, castigating Woods in scathing language for his temerity in taking on the executive and questioning the integrity of the government and of the defence companies selected to supply arms — to whom the letter was also copied.
Squires noted Woods’s evidence that the letter, “in its hostility, sarcasm and untrue statements of several issues, it was like nothing he had ever received”.
At the time of the dispatch of this letter to Woods it was widely speculated that Zuma was not its author. Woods himself told the media that he believed the letter had been penned by Mbeki himself, or by his legal adviser, Mujanko Gumbi, as it was couched in a style much more characteristic of the president than of Zuma.
The letter — and the controversy over its authorship — will apparently be raised by the Zuma camp in meetings with the ANC leadership, if it has not already been discussed.
“Zuma is not prepared to carry the can for something he didn’t write,” said the source.
Zuma’s allies also point out that other questions surrounding the arms deal arose during the trial.
These include documentary evidence in the court record that Mbeki himself attended secret meetings with representatives of Thomson, at which his approval was sought for the empowerment component of the French bid to secure contracts via its purchase of African Defence Systems.
Mbeki’s office has so far refused to respond to questions about these alleged meetings, citing the sub judice rule.