End of the road for Zuma?

Former President Jacob Zuma might as well back down and allow his arms deal-related trial to start as his prospects of convincing the Constitutional Court to quash it are ‘almost none’. This was the view of at least one prominent constitutional law expert following the SCA's dismissal on Friday of his bid to appeal a KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) order refusing his application for a permanent stay of the 15-year-old corruption prosecution he has been fighting. A Weekend Argus report quotes constitutional law expert Professor Pierre de Vos, of UCT, as saying Zuma would not succeed after this. ‘The possibility in practice is almost none because you can only go to the Constitutional Court if you have constitutional issues or if you have another point of law that has not been decided yet. His case is made more difficult because the various courts have already ruled on all of the points that he raised,’ said De Vos. He said the High Court had dealt with and exhausted all his arguments. ‘I would be very surprised if the Constitutional Court says he has a case. I think the ruling on Friday means that the trial is going to go forward in the near future.’ However, another legal expert, Richard Stuurman, of the Pietermaritzburg-based Zaca, Stuurman and Magubane Attorneys, said Zuma still had a case to argue at the Constitutional Court. ‘He would raise an issue about the infringement of his rights and that due to the length of this case, including the withdrawals, his rights are being infringed. He has prospects when we look at the infringement of his rights,’ said Stuurman.

Zuma is considering taking the matter to the Constitutional Court, according to pro-Zuma Radical Economic Transformation (RET) spokesperson Carl Niehaus. ‘That option is definitely there, but I do not want to pre-empt what the decision would be from President Zuma in consultation with his lawyers,’ he said. RET activists were shocked by the SCA’S ruling, said Niehaus in the Weekend Argus report. ‘Because one always hopes that this matter would be dealt with differently as we have been saying over and over again, we believe that there should be a stay of prosecution in this case as we believe that President Zuma does not have the slightest chance of getting a fair trial,’ he said. He said he was concerned that if the matter goes to trial, Zuma would run out of money to pay for his lawyers. ‘There are those who are hoping that his financial resources would dry-up. The financial issue impacted his personal life,’ he said. He said he hoped that there would be people who would generously come forward to assist Zuma with funds.

The Constitutional Court is unlikely to agree to hear his case, given the unequivocal way in which the two SCA judges dismissed Zuma’s application for leave to appeal. That's the opinion of Business Day legal writer Karyn Maughan, who notes Zuma’s lawyers must know this, but, by petitioning the SCA president or approaching the Constitutional Court, Zuma’s legal team will be able to get him something that he desperately needs: time. That is because after a series of bruising court rulings Zuma has not only lost his previously untrammelled access to state funding of his defence costs, but has been ordered to repay more than R16m already spent on those costs. He has also been ordered to personally pay millions spent in his failed bid to overturn then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report, a ruling that he has been given the right to challenge by the SCA. He is trying to persuade that same court to allow him to appeal against the ruling that cut government funding of his corruption trial. For now, though, it would appear that Zuma does not have the millions he would need to defend himself against a case that the NPA maintains is rock solid. Lead prosecutor Billy Downer has previously stated that the NPA would be ready to proceed with Zuma’s trial in April. He has told the SCA that the state’s case against the former President was founded on a recently updated forensic audit of his finances, and therefore would not be compromised by the 15-year trial delay. Business Day says that with no money, almost no chance of getting his corruption prosecution appeal heard and a court that seems unwilling to accept what he says is poor health, Zuma appears to have been painted into a corner.