Durban businessman Schabir Shaik’s appeal against his fraud and corruption convictions has been dismissed.
Reading the judgement in Bloemfontein, Supreme Court of Appeal Judge President Craig Howie said there were also no grounds to change Shaik’s effective prison sentence of 15 years.
Shaik was convicted at the Durban High Court in July last year. Judge Hilary Squires sentenced him to 15 years in prison on each of two corruption counts, and another three years for fraud. The sentences were to run concurrently.
On September 26, the SCA reserved judgement on the appeal. The next day, the court also reserved judgement in a civil appeal against an asset forfeiture order of about R34-million.
Shaik did not attend the proceedings in Bloemfontein, and was expected to respond to the judgement at a lunchtime media conference in Cape Town.
Analysts said the judgement might make or break former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s chances of becoming president.
Squires found he had a ”generally corrupt” relationship with Zuma, a ruling that prompted President Thabo Mbeki to sack the man once seen as his preferred successor.
Prosecutors later charged Zuma with receiving bribes in connection with an arms deal, but a judge threw out the case in a humiliating defeat for the state.
Prosecutors say they may issue new charges against Zuma.
”Mentally, emotionally and spiritually I have braced myself for the worst possible outcome and internalised possible incarceration,” Shaik told a radio interviewer last week.
Sipho Seepe, an academic director of Henley Management College, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Monday morning that the judgement was to be expected.
”Judge Squires is a regal judge and the manner in which he conducted the case and the trial was meticulous.”
Seepe said that judgement would not necessarily make it easier for the NPA to prosecute Zuma, saying the judgement dealt with ”the corrupt behaviour of Shaik and not Zuma”.
He said that the judgement also showed that Mbeki did not act in haste when he fired Zuma.
”It’s good news for Mbeki because he can actually make a case that there was sufficient information before him.”
”Now there’s going to be an intense campaign to protect Zuma and there is also going to be an intense campaign to nail him.”
Zuma has strongly denied wrongdoing and has described himself as victim of a political conspiracy designed to deny him Mbeki’s job.
Aubrey Matshiqi, a political analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies, said the dismissal of Shaik’s appeal was ”not good news” for Zuma.
”Now two courts have found that payments made by Schabir Shaik to him [Zuma] were corrupt,” Matshiqi said.
”Not even on a legal level, but at a political level, questions about whether it was appropriate, and questions about Jacob Zuma’s judgement, or lack thereof [will resurface].”
Matshiqi said the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) would be ”emboldened by this decision to dismiss Shaik’s appeal … [and] there is a strong inclination that charges of corruption will be reinstated against Zuma”.
”I think Mr Jacob Zuma will not be happy with this outcome,” Matshiqi told the M&G Online.
However, he said one of the main reasons Zuma’s corruption trial was struck off the role, was because the NPA was initially unprepared, adding that the trial would probably resume ”later rather than sooner … [when the NPA is] properly and thoroughly prepared”.
Zuma, acquitted of separate rape charges earlier this year, remains deputy president of the ruling African National Congress, keeping the popular politician in the race for the party leadership at an ANC congress to be held next year.
The winner of that contest is virtually certain to succeed Mbeki as president in 2009, given the ANC’s dominance of South Africa’s post-apartheid politics.
Zuma’s supporters have turned out in their thousands to back their hero, whose grass-roots style appeals to left-wing ANC allies frustrated with the pace of change under Mbeki’s market-oriented policies.
Some analysts say that the wave of support for Zuma appears to be fading as doubts grow over his suitability for the top job and signs that the ANC is seeking to heal internal rifts before the congress, leaving no clear frontrunner for the presidency.
”As we approach the most critical year in the short history of our democracy, South Africa faces an extraordinary situation,” political commentator Alistair Sparks said in a recent essay. ”We have a lame duck president and a lame duck challenger.” – Reuters, Sapa