Jacob Zuma has lodged an application for leave to appeal against the Durban High Court’s decision to request documents from Mauritius that may relate to arms-deal corruption. The African National Congress (ANC) deputy president lodged the application on Monday.
The documents the state seeks from Mauritius include the 2000 diary of Alain Thetard, the former chief executive of Thales International’s South African subsidiary Thint, which reportedly details a meeting in March 2000 between him, Zuma and fraud convict Schabir Shaik.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) alleges that an agreement on a R500 000-a-year bribe for Zuma was reached at this meeting.
Judge Phillip Levensohn ruled in favour of granting the letter of request on April 2 after legal teams for Zuma and Thint had argued against the letter in the Pietermaritzburg High Court in March.
Monday’s seven-page application was submitted and signed by Zuma’s attorney, Michael Hulley.
The application claims that Levensohn ”erred” when he rejected Zuma and Thint’s assertion that legal proceedings against them were still pending and the NPA was still bound by a March 2006 order issued by Judge Pete Combrinck that any letter of request would have to be granted by a trial judge.
Zuma’s attorney claimed that the state should have withdrawn the original application before Combrinck.
In his decision, Levensohn had said that the application was automatically withdrawn when Judge Herbert Msimang struck the corruption case against Zuma and Thint from the roll.
Prosecution
Zuma’s legal team also claimed that Levensohn had erred in not obtaining evidence from the NPA on what ”role the documents would play in the investigation directed at a decision to prosecute or not”.
During the two days of hearing last month, prosecutor Billy Downer said that the documents were needed for an investigation but that no decision had been made on whether Zuma should be prosecuted.
In handing down his decision, Levensohn rejected Thint and Zuma’s claim that the state was not seeking the information for use in an investigation as described in terms of the International Cooperation in Criminal Matters Act.
However, in the application it was argued that the state had not ”established the necessary jurisdictional facts” in terms of the Act.
Judge Hilary Squires’s decision to accept copies that would later implicate Durban businessman Schabir Shaik was raised in the application, in which Hulley said that Levensohn had erred in ”holding that weight should be attached to the decision in Shaik as to the propriety of prosecutional conduct”.
In March, Zuma had claimed that the state did ”not have clean hands” when it took copies of the documents during the search-and-seizure raids in Mauritius in 2001.
However, Levensohn rejected the claim and said that during Shaik’s trial in 2005, Squires had accepted the copies as evidence and that therefore ”there had been no impropriety” when copies of the documents were made.
Should Levensohn reject the appeal, then Zuma can petition the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.
At the time that Levensohn ruled in favour of the NPA, Ajay Sooklal, the attorney for Thint, also said the company would lodge an appeal. He could not be reached on Monday for comment.
Cosatu denial
Meanwhile, there is no truth in media reports that Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leaders had ”dropped” their support for Zuma as a candidate for the ANC presidency, the union federation said on Sunday.
”There is no truth in the front-page story in today’s Sunday Times, alleging that Cosatu leaders have demanded that the federation drop its support for Jacob Zuma as its preferred candidate for the presidency of the ANC,” said Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven in a statement. ”No such discussion has taken place.”
According to the newspaper, Cosatu leaders who attended a central executive committee meeting held at the union federation’s headquarters in February had expressed their reservations about Zuma becoming ANC president.
The newspaper said unnamed Cosatu leaders informed it that general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi had told the Cosatu executive he never said that Zuma should be the next ANC president and suggested that the federation should consider an alternative candidate. Vavi has long been a key Zuma supporter. — Sapa