Parties use Zuma decision as stick to beat ANC

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille promised on Wednesday to push the corruption case against ANC president Jacob Zuma with ‘everything we’ve got”.

‘The principle of equality before the law is at stake,” Zille told a gathering of her supporters in the town of Kirkwood outside of Port Elizabeth.

‘We will drive the case with everything we have got.”

Zille filed an urgent application in the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday requesting a review of the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) decision to drop charges against Zuma.

She said the reasons given by the NPA for dropping the charges were irrational.

‘The reasons given by [NPA head] Mokotedi Mpshe for dropping the charges against Mr Zuma were irrational and had nothing to do with the substance of the case,” Zille said.

Zille received a rousing welcome to the event with the mainly Afrikaans speaking delegates singing ‘Dis Zille wat die wind laat waai” [It’s Zille who brings the wind].

Earlier Democratic Alliance member Donald Lee praised Zille for bringing ‘winds of change” to South Africa.

Zille told the audience that Mpshe had buckled to political pressure from the African National Congress to drop corruption charges against Zuma.

‘Mr Mpshe could not be conceived to be taking a neutral decision. He expects Mr Zuma to become president. He knows exactly what happened to his predecessor Vusi Pikoli,” she said in reference to the former NPA leader who was fired from his job by President Kgalema Motlanthe.

‘Mr Mpshe knows that if he does not behave like an ANC cadre he will have no work.”

Zille, who spoke in Afrikaans, said the DA would go all-out to win the national election in 2014. First the party would try to take a number of municipalities and set an example of good governance.

‘In 2014 our plan is to win the national election,” she said to a shout of ‘Zille for President”.

She accused Zuma and ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema of trying to divide the DA’s supporters by visiting towns like Orania.

”They want to divide us. that is why Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema are so in love with Orania.”

Malema visited Orania recently, while Zuma last week praised Afrikaners for being true South Africans.

Later Zille and her convoy drove through the Karoo to Jansenville, where she sang and danced with a small group of DA supporters. She then headed for the town Graaff-Reinet to continue her Karoo campaign trail.

ANC used ‘thuggery’
Meanwhile, UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said on Wednesday that the ANC had resorted to the ”politics of thuggery” in its efforts to get the charges withdrawn.

”The recent decision by the ANC to pressurise the NPA into withdrawing charges against Jacob Zuma, is introducing the politics of thuggery, at its best,” he said in a speech prepared for delivery at an election rally in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.

He said the onus was now on the South African people to vote the ANC out of power.

”If you do not, you will be endorsing this culture of selective justice, where the poor rot in jail whilst the rich and powerful escape the law.

”It would be a sad day if the people in villages were to give another mandate to a party that has violated the constitutional principles of this country,” he said.

Holomisa added that it was unacceptable for Zuma to blame the NPA and the media, when he has failed to explain the money he received from his former financial advisor Schabir Shaik and the Thint arms company.

”Can we trust a leader of the ruling party who has successfully dodged his day in court? Some ministers, like the former minister of intelligence Lindiwe Sisulu, were in an ANC committee tasked with seeing that Zuma does not go to court,” he said.

He added that state intelligence was used illegally to ensure the charges against Zuma were dropped.

”Now we know why people like Mbeki, Pikoli and ministers were removed, the aim was to replace them with lackeys like President [Kgalema] Motlanthe,” he said referring to former president Thabo Mbeki and former head of the NPA, Vusi Pikoli.

”It is clear that they had an ANC instruction to prevent the NPA from prosecuting Zuma,” said Holomisa.

He said that the state needed to explain how these taped conversations of the intelligence service landed in a private hands to be used for political purposes.

”The only way to fight this is for people to ensure that we reduce the ANC’s majority in Parliament so that we can reinstate the charges,” he said.

Zuma’s fraud and corruption charges was formally dropped in the Durban High Court on Tuesday. – Sapa