On the eve of the Constitutional Court hearing over former president Jacob Zuma’s eligibility to stand for parliament, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party founder Jabulani Khumalo has submitted an affidavit to court distancing the party from Zuma’s stance in the case, saying the party would abide by any decision the court came to.
In his affidavit, Khumalo said neither Zuma “nor his representatives” had authority to litigate on behalf of the party. Just a day earlier, counsel had filed legal argument on behalf of the party.
He also claimed Zuma’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla seemed to have “forged my signature on a document I did not prepare and sent to the IEC [Electoral Commission] to create the impression he [Zuma] is now president”. The letter also claimed that Khumalo had resigned as president and had been replaced by Zuma.
“Perhaps therein lies the confusion,” Khumalo said.
The court is on Friday scheduled to hear an urgent application for leave to appeal by the IEC after the Electoral Court cleared the way for Zuma to stand as one of the MK candidates on its party list to parliament.
Khumalo said while the MK was cited in the court case, he was not informed or consulted about the litigation, and the record of proceedings was never given to him as president or to the executive committee.
“I, however, have reasonable apprehension that he purports that his position is supported by MK party, which it is not,” said Khumalo.
Zuma may litigate in his own name, he said. But he was apprehensive that the party might suffer irreparable damage by what Zuma claimed were the party’s positions in this case — “worse still if the court makes adverse findings against it,”, he said.
Any previous decision by the party to involve itself with Zuma’s matters “would have just been confined to those matters and did not constitute blanket consent for all times”, he said.
Khumalo said he believed Zuma-Sambudla forged his signature on the document sent to the IEC, or was aware of the person who forged it, because it was not sent from the official party email address but from her. Also, on the same day the letter was sent, he had also sent a letter to the IEC “communicating something different and ironically not using the same email address”.
“Second, and most telling, the signatures on these letters are patently different,” he said.
The party logos were also different and the letterhead used in the letter sent by Zuma-Sambudla was an unofficial one — “the same letterhead that was used in the statement communicating my expulsion”, Khumalo said.
Earlier in the affidavit he described his fallout with Zuma, saying Zuma — who was only the face of the party’s election campaign and held no official position in the party — “took an unilateral decision, without any right of reply, to expel me”.
“To quote him: ‘ng’yakuxosha’ [‘I am getting rid of you’]). I understood him to mean he is expelling me and removing me as the party leader,” said Khumalo. This was confirmed through a media statement but it was not authorised or written by official office-bearers, he said.
The party did not want to concern itself with the “merits and demerits of the case”, Khumalo said. It simply wanted to inform the Constitutional Court that Zuma did not have the support of the party for his position, should he claim that he does.
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