NPA stopped me getting my day in court, says Jacob Zuma

Former president Jacob Zuma says he is not responsible for any of the delays that led to the corruption prosecution against him dragging on for 17 years, and has laid all the blame on the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

And it is that claim, which the NPA contends is untrue, that is the most pivotal to Zuma’s final bid to stop his trial from going ahead: with an application for a permanent stay of his prosecution.

That’s because the seminal Constitutional Court ruling on whether a permanent stay of prosecution should be granted focuses on the right of any accused person “to a fair trial, which shall include the right – to a public trial before an ordinary court of law within a reasonable time after having been charged”.

For Zuma’s application to succeed, he needs to show that it is not possible for him to receive a fair trial because of the “undue delay” in his prosecution proceeding. And, importantly, that this delay is not his fault.

In papers filed at the Durban high court on Monday, Zuma argues that “the NPA continues to rehash the old and tired narrative that I am the sole cause of the delays in my prosecution… this is simply untrue.

“It is the NPA and its various inconsistent decisions that have caused the delay of this matter.”

Zuma argues that the NPA is to blame for the decade-long delay caused by then acting national director of public prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe’s decision to withdraw all charges against him in 2009, based on the “spy tapes” recordings.

After fighting for years to justify that decision, on the basis that the recordings revealed political meddling in the timing of when Zuma was recharged in 2007, the NPA ultimately admitted that Mpshe had based that decision on an incorrect section of the law.

Zuma is adamant that he cannot be blamed for that delay, despite the fact that he fought alongside the NPA to defend Mpshe’s decision.

It is also Zuma’s case that he should have been charged with his former financial advisor Schabir Shaik in 2003. He’s also arguing that, following Shaik’s conviction for corrupting him in 2005, the State delayed in putting him on trial for two years.

The NPA has conceded that it may have been responsible for a 22-month delay in the case against Zuma proceeding. But it also argues that he is to blame for some of the postponements he now complains of, because he launched multiple, ultimately fruitless, challenges to the admissibility of the evidence that would be used to try him.

This included challenges to the warrants used by the then Scorpions unit to raid properties belonging to Zuma and his lawyers, and seize 93,000 documents that were then used to compile a detailed forensic audit into Zuma’s financial affairs.

Zuma also unsuccessfully fought the state’s efforts to obtain mutual legal assistance Mutual Legal Assistance from authorities in Mauritius, in order that it could obtain the originals of 12 documents it would use to argue that he had accepted a R500,000 a year bribe from French arms company Thales.

Zuma also took the NPA to court for failing to seek his representations about the evidence against him before recharging him, after the case against him was struck from the court roll because the state was not ready to proceed. He ultimately lost that case in the Supreme Court of Appeal.

While the NPA says all of these cases were part of Zuma’s “Stalingrad” strategy and were aimed solely at delaying his prosecution from proceeding, Zuma denies this.

“In the past, and on occasions when I deemed it appropriate to challenge the conduct of the NPA and how it collected evidence, I approached courts for appropriate relief. The NPA has done the same.”

It will now be up to the high court to wade through these accusations and counteraccusations – and decide not only whether Zuma or his prosecutors caused this case to drag on for nearly two decades, but if that delay meant it is impossible for the former president to get a fair trial.

Zuma is effectively putting the NPA on trial, in the hope that doing so will prevent it from doing the same to him.