Of arms and brave men

He came to tell ‘of arms and a man”, and on Tuesday prosecutor Billy Downer and his team resembled warriors.

Standing proud in the Constitutional Court after they won their last battle (for now), Downer, his fellow prose­cutors and investigators from the Scorpions were all smiles as they shook hands and sent SMSs to spread the news.

Moments earlier 10 judges of the court dismissed Schabir Shaik’s application for leave to appeal his fraud and corruption conviction and 15-year prison sentence.

‘Thank you very much,” Downer retorted humbly while shaking hands, then pointing to his cellphone: ‘But I must phone Leonard, I must call him now.”

He referred, of course, to Scorpions head Leo­nard McCarthy, who, together with former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) boss Bulelani Ngcuka and later his successor, Vusi Pikoli, had entrusted the experienced Downer and his team to investigate the arms deal since 2000.

One could assume that the call to McCarthy was not all hoorays, but also about their next mission: recharging ANC deputy president and presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma.

It is a known fact that Downer and his team had been working around the clock to ‘fix” their case against Zuma and arms company Thint after the lashing they got from Judge Herbert Msimang in the Pietermaritzburg High Court last year.

The Constitutional Court’s judgement is one of the factors that they, together with acting NPA boss Mokotedi Mpshe, will take into account when they decide whether to reinstate charges against Zuma and Thint.

The only outstanding judgement now is that of the Supreme Court of Appeal on the disputed search and seizure operations at the homes and offices of Zuma and his benefactors, and on the Scorpions’ attempts to obtain original documents from Mauritius. It is expected to deliver judgement towards the end of November.

This week it was almost exactly three years after Shaik, Zuma’s former financial adviser, pleaded not guilty to the charges put to him by Downer in the Durban High Court.

In his opening address, Downer borrowed from Greek warrior poet Virgil’s The Aeneid and told Judge Hilary Squires: ‘I tell of arms and a man.” In the months that followed, a complex puzzle of patronage, political favours and a generally corrupt relationship between Shaik and Zuma became clear as Downer and his team systematically built their case in full glare of the country.

Shaik’s defence was to no avail. He was exposed as a liar who even cooked his own CV to impress people. And when Zuma refused to testify in his friend’s defence, things started looking bleak for the chief executive and chairperson of Nkobi Holdings.

The Shaik trial was groundbreaking in many respects. A corrupt relationship between a politician and a businessman, where not one specific bribe for a particular act or omission is prevalent, was never going to be easy to prove. Even from within the ranks of the NPA colleagues sniggered sceptically about the team’s prospects of success.

It is now 36 months later and 16 judges have agreed with their case that Shaik and Zuma were in a corrupt relationship and Shaik facilitated a bribe from Thint for him.

Shaik’s arguments that Zuma and Thint should have been charged with him were unconvincing and the court rubbished his allegations that Downer’s conduct during the Scorpions’ raids in Mauritius was untoward.

In a week where the morale of NPA prosecutors and investigators sank to new lows, the Constitutional Court vindicated the thorough and thankless work of South Africans who succeeded in executing their duties without fear, favour or prejudice.