Spy claims against Hanekom a matter for ANC not courts, says Zuma

Former president Jacob Zuma says Derek Hanekom’s urgent defamation case against him — over Zuma’s tweeted claims that the former minister is a “known enemy agent” — is not a matter for the courts, but should instead be dealt with by the ANC. 

In papers filed at the Durban high court on Wednesday, Zuma said: “Hanekom’s anxiety about his professed role in the anti-apartheid struggle, whether or not this role was duplicitous and whether he was an apartheid plant within ANC structures, is misplaced in these proceedings.

“It is a matter best left to the African National Congress and how it seeks to deal with those within its ranks that may have sold out their own comrades. It is also a matter best left to Hanekom’s own conscience.”

Hanekom’s defamation case against Zuma, in which he is suing the former president for R500,000 and demanding he retract and apologise for his “untrue and defamatory” claims, marks the first legal fightback against the former president’s claims that the ANC leadership had been infiltrated by spies planted by foreign intelligence agencies.

The defamation case against Zuma will be heard by the Durban high court on Friday.  

Hanekom served as minister in Zuma’s cabinet, in which he held the portfolios of science and technology and later that of tourism. He wants Zuma to be “interdicted from publishing any statement that says or implies” that he “is or was an enemy agent or apartheid spy”. 

The former minister, who is regarded as a close ally of President Cyril Ramaphosa, maintains it is clear that Zuma had effectively labelled him as being a spy.

But Zuma denies this. The former president maintains he was instead referring to how Hanekom “connived and colluded with enemies and opposition parties that sought to remove me as President of the Republic of South Africa”.

He has hit out at Hanekom for failing “to disclose whether or not he received any financial reward or support associated with his role in ousting me as head of state or his role in the so-called CR17 campaign”. 

Zuma posted his disputed tweet in response to allegations from EFF leader Julius Malema that Hanekom had “plotted” with the EFF “to bring down Zuma”. Malema further claimed that Hanekom had provided the EFF with “the list of the ANC MPs who were going to vote with us in the vote of no-confidence against Jacob Zuma”. 

Zuma responded by tweeting: “I’m not surprised by @Julius_S_Malema revelations regarding @Derek_Hanekom. It is part of the plan I mentioned at the Zondo Commission. @Derek_Hanekom is a known enemy agent”. 

In court papers, Hanekom contends that “the statement was intended by Mr Zuma, and understood by those who read it, to mean that I was an apartheid spy and part of a plan to infiltrate the ANC and assassinate Mr Zuma’s character. This is the sting of the statement and highly defamatory of me. 

“Mr Zuma has no evidence to support his allegations. And yet, he refused to remove the statement from his Twitter account.” 

According to Zuma: “As my tweet demonstrates, my removal as head of state was part of a broader plan by those opposed to the wishes and objectives of the party that deployed me as head of state.” 

While denying that he was suggesting in his July tweet that Hanekom was an apartheid spy, Zuma does not rule out the possibility that he will name him as one when he resumes his testimony at the Zondo inquiry into state capture. 

It was at the inquiry on July 15 that Zuma claimed he had been the subject of a three-decade-old plot by foreign and apartheid intelligence agencies to assassinate him and his character because he knew the identities of “spies” within the ANC.

He has claimed that Ngoako Ramatlhodi and Siphiwe Nyanda, who were both ministers in his cabinet, were among these spies. Both men have strongly denied these accusations, with Ramatlhodi daring Zuma to take a lie detector test.

Zuma now claims that Hanekom’s defamation action against him is nothing but an attempt to “prevent me from testifying truthfully and fully before the Zondo Commission”. He accused Hanekom of seeking “to prevent me from continuing with the revelations I seek to make before the Zondo Commission”.

“This may or may not include him, but for present purposes, my tweet has nothing to do (with) whether or not he was an apartheid spy.”