Some comments made by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo during hearings of the state capture commission have given the impression that he accepts the narrative that former president Jacob Zuma was responsible for state capture.
That was an argument put forward by Zuma’s legal team during their application for Zondo to recuse himself from chairing the commission.
Zuma has raised a number of reasons for why Zondo should recuse himself. Those ranged from a historic family link, which the former president believed was the reason the judge was biased against him, to the fact that the two men had a “close personal relationship”.
Zondo denied the close relationship on Monday.
The application for the recusal of Zondo was filed last week, just days before the former president had been subpoenaed to appear before the commission.
Zondo issued a subpoena for Zuma to appear before the commission this week, after he and his attorneys used several tactics to delay the former president’s appearance before the commission.
On Monday, Zuma’s advocate, Muzi Sikhakhane, told Zondo that the application for his recusal was not about the judge's integrity.
He said if the application for his recusal was dismissed, they would in all likelihood approach the courts to have it reviewed.
“Even if we lose we will review you and that is not helpful. If you force me to bring him [Zuma] here without a climate which makes him believe he is not charged, he will exercise his rights to say nothing,” Sikhakhane said.
He argued that there was no such thing as "state capture" in law, and that it was a political concept. He said that from the beginning of the commission witnesses who aligned themselves with the narrative that Zuma facilitated state capture, were given preference.
“You need a wide range of perspectives about what exactly happened ... you don’t only have to call Barbara Hogan, Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas, who are proponents of that concept,” Sikhakhane said, referring to ministers who served under Zuma and implicated him in allegations of state capture at the commission.
“I am suggesting that if one looks [from the] first day of this commission we were listening to horror stories from people shouting from the rooftops that they are not corrupt and that there is this thing called state capture ... [and] that their version was accepted.”
He said the commission had lined up people who had an axe to grind with Zuma.
Zondo, however, pointed out that Zuma could have lodged an application to cross-examine any of these witnesses, but chose not to do so.
Sikhakhane said this was because they did not feel they would have been given enough time to cross-examine someone who testified for two days, claiming that cross-examinations were only allowed for an hour or two.
The former president has previously said that he did not feel he needed to apply to cross-examine witnesses because he did not believe that he had been implicated in criminal or ethical wrongdoing.
Sikhakhane also tried to dispel the notion that Zuma refused to come before the commission, saying that this was untrue. He said Zuma believed that the commission must, at some point, hear his version.
Zuma’s advocate raised concern on behalf of his client, that when he first appeared before the commission he made serious allegations about the commission, and that those had been ignored.
“He is of the view that that was ignored, disregarded and ridiculed because it does not align with [the] dominant version given by other witnesses,” Sikhakhane said.
At his first appearance at the commission in July 2019, Zuma described an almost 30-year plot to remove him from office and kill him. He claimed that some of his own ANC comrades were apartheid spies working with intelligence agencies to implement the plot.
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