Police target ‘Zuma plot hoaxers’

Police investigators say that the claim of an assassination plot against Jacob Zuma is a hoax — and are considering prosecuting senior members of Zuma’s inner circle in connection with it.

Senior members of the South African Police Services crime intelligence unit told the Mail & Guardian they believe the plot claim may have been engineered to enhance Zuma’s public profile and force the state to beef up the already tight security around the ANC deputy president.

Zuma is campaigning to replace Thabo Mbeki as ANC president at the party’s decisive national conference in December.

Police were this week seeking to secure search warrants to raid the homes of a close Zuma confidant and a well-known figure associated with the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust. Also under suspicion is an associate who gave evidence on Zuma’s behalf during his rape trial last year.

The police hope to find, among other things, handwritten notes signed in May last year by the ‘sniper” allegedly paid to kill Zuma.

These notes, in the possession of a Zuma associate, have so far not been made available to police. The claimed reason is that they provide clues about the individual who may have hired the ‘sniper”, which Zuma’s circle wants to ensure remains intact.

One of the investigators said: ‘This whole thing was not well thought-out. There is no vehicle, no firearm, no evidence of the building where the sniper was to be positioned, or of the alleged gathering in Durban during which Zuma was to be killed.”

The source said the police believed the plot was conceived in early 2005, at about the same time as the ANC ‘hoax” emails, which allegedly implicate senior politicians in a conspiracy to thwart Zuma’s presidential ambitions.

The investigators were in Durban this week to wrap up their probe and submit their findings to KwaZulu-Natal director of public prosecutions Shamila Batohi, who will decide whether the state will bring charges.

Zuma’s aide, Elias Khumalo, and Durban attorney Themba Dlamini said they would ask the sheriff of the court to compel Captain Johan van Vuuren to reveal what police had removed from the lawyers’ computer. The two men say that the police may have breached attorney/client privilege by allegedly downloading a file relating to another Zuma supporter, former pastor turned black empowerment beneficiary Muzi Kunene, from Dlamini’s computer.

The action would seek to force the sheriff of the court to reveal what information Van Vuuren obtained from the computer.

Khumalo briefed Zuma about the plot, as well as giving him an affidavit claiming a sniper had confessed that an Israeli, code-named ‘Sheik”, had offered him R1-million to carry out the assassination.

Zuma apparently held on to the affidavit for more than two months before handing it over to the chief of the VIP protection unit, Shaun Shabalala, with instructions to investigate its authenticity.

A Zuma aide said Zuma had not asked the police to investigate.

‘He did not want publicity about this thing and he was also very careful not to cause a national uproar about it until the law enforcement agencies had pronounced on the authenticity of the claim.”

Asked if he was aware that there might be arrests in the matter, Khumalo said: ‘I know that they have been trying to paint us as conspirators.”

He said he was disappointed that the investigation into the Zuma assassination plot had degenerated into a campaign to discredit the ANC deputy president’s close associates.

‘This is worrying because it seems that the new trend is to discredit the person who reports the crime and treat the complainant as a criminal.”

Khumalo has engaged a top law firm to write to police crime intel­ligence demanding clarity on whether the investigators saw him as a co-conspirator or a suspect in the matter.