A bag of papers belonging to African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma which was found outside a Durban flat has been sent for forensic testing, KwaZulu-Natal police said on Tuesday.
Police spokesperson Phindile Radebe said the bag was found outside a Durban beachfront flat that had been broken into during the early hours of Monday morning.
Radebe said detectives had obtained fingerprints from the flat.
”We are doing an investigation. Fingerprints have been taken. There is no indication that something was stolen.”
Radebe said she could not elaborate on the papers, except to say that they belonged to Zuma.
”We have opened an ordinary housebreaking case,” she said.
The flat does not belong to Zuma, who according to Radebe, ”occasionally” used it. Zuma’s attorney Michael Hulley told the South African Press Association that Zuma had last stayed in the flat on Sunday.
Earlier the Star newspaper quoted Hulley as saying: ”This does not appear to be a random act of crime.”
The report said it appeared the intruder had rifled through the ANC deputy president’s documents.
Police spokesman Superintendent Muzi Mngomezulu told the paper ”a hard object, probably a crowbar” was used to enter the flat.
In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) condemned the break-in, saying: ”This incident is part-and-parcel of the concerted drive to victimise the ANC deputy president and to prevent him from getting a fair trial.
”This break-in follows the NPA’s raid on his Johannesburg house in 2005, which Cosatu also condemned.
”Without enough evidence to secure a conviction, some within the state structures seem to be using any means, legal and illegal, to lay their hands on enough ‘evidence’ to justify continuing their campaign to prosecute him, blacken his name and destroy his reputation.”
Asked for a reaction to the Cosatu comments, NPA spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi said: ”We are not providing any comment. We can’t stoop that low. We don’t make comments on such unfounded comments.”
Punishment
The Star also reported that prosecuting authorities wanted Zuma to be censured for his ”scandalous”, ”gratuitous” and ”unwarranted” accusations of dishonesty and political engineering against the state.
The report said the Scorpions had asked the Supreme Court of Appeal to order Zuma to foot a multimillion-rand legal bill as punishment.
The ANC deputy president claimed that the state’s investigation into possible corruption charges against him was ”engineered” to tarnish his name ahead of the party’s conference in December, the report said.
It added that the state would ask the appeal court ”to consider ordering punitive costs against Zuma and Thint”.
This was ”in the light of persistent unfounded and unwarranted attacks on the integrity and good faith of officials of the National Director of Public Prosecutions”. – Sapa