Jacob Zuma will appear in the High Court in Durban on Friday when his legal team will ask for his graft case to be postponed.
The former president is facing 16 charges — one count of racketeering, two counts of corruption, one count of money laundering and 12 counts of fraud. This is in relation to 783 questionable payments connected with the arms deal, over which Zuma’s former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was jailed for corruption.
Zuma’s lawyer, Michael Hulley, confirmed that the former president would appear in the high court on Friday.
Hulley said he would ask the court to postpone the matter so that the legal team could deal with Zuma’s review application and the DA and EFF’s applications to have him pay back his legal fees, which were covered by the state.
Hulley said the team wanted the matter postponed "until a reasonable time" so that it would be able to indicate to the court where all those matters were.
Zuma was in Johannesburg on Wednesday to visit the Soweto home of ANC stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who died on Monday. He lauded Nelson Mandela’s former wife for the role she played in SA’s liberation struggle.
Madikizela-Mandela, who was an ANC national executive committee member, was critical of the state of the party under Zuma and had added her voice to those who called for him to resign as far back as 2016.
Zuma resigned as president of the country in February after the ANC recalled him.
In March, he was served with an indictment and summons to appear in the High Court in Durban.
The indictment came days after national director of public prosecutions Shaun Abrahams announced that Zuma would face the criminal charges that were dropped in 2009.
Zuma will, however, take Abrahams’s decision to charge him on review, which will delay the matter. The review application has not been lodged yet.
Zuma has also said he needs to know whether he would be responsible for his own legal fees or whether the state would continue to fund them.
Legal costs for Zuma’s earlier bids to avoid having to face charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering had amounted to R15.3m.
In response to a question in Parliament in March, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the state was paying Zuma’s legal costs because the allegations against him came while he was in the employ of government.
The DA and the EFF want Zuma to pay that money back to the government. The DA has lodged an application in the High Court in Pretoria, asking that it order that Zuma pay back to the Treasury any money that the state paid towards his personal legal costs.
The EFF said it would also lodge an application. It is not clear if this has been done yet.
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