Judgement in Schabir Shaik’s appeal against fraud and corruption convictions will be delivered on Monday, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) said.
The Durban businessman 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 R3-million.
Judgement was expected to be delivered from 9.30am.
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, but this could hinge on whether Shaik’s appeal is upheld by the SCA.
”If [the appeal] is upheld it creates a new political dynamic. People will believe that the president acted in haste to dismiss Zuma before waiting for the legal process to exhaust itself,” said Sipho Seepe, a political analyst at Henley Management College.
”But if it is rejected, it will make things more difficult for Zuma.”
Shaik was sentenced to an effective 15 years in prison for corruption and fraud in June 2005. If his appeal is rejected, Shaik’s lawyers may turn to the Constitutional Court in a final, long-shot attempt to keep him out of prison.
”Mentally, emotionally and spiritually I have braced myself for the worst possible outcome and internalised possible incarceration,” Shaik told a radio interviewer last week.
Zuma has strongly denied wrongdoing and has described himself as victim of a political conspiracy designed to deny him Mbeki’s job.
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 if 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