Pikoli offered job back for promise not to charge Zuma

It notes this is one of the revelations made by the former National Director of Public Prosecutions in his memoir My Second Initiation. In the memoir, Pikoli reveals how, during the period of his suspension - between 2008 and 2009, when the NPA was considering reinstating charges against Zuma - he was approached by several people who said 'the man (Zuma)' wanted to talk to him. He says he suspected that Zuma wanted to discuss his corruption case and refused to meet him. 'I refused, of course, because I did not know what I would say to him. I can only imagine that Zuma wanted to meet with me to discuss his own pending matter,' he writes. According to Pikoli, people in the ANC approached to him to trade his reinstatement for a guarantee that he would not pursue corruption charges against Zuma became even more direct. 'Look man, if you can just give us a guarantee that on reinstatement you will not bring charges against the man, then the matter is straightforward,' Pikoli quotes one Zuma supporter as saying. He writes that the Zuma supporters promised him that he could get his job back even if the Ginwala Commission of Inquiry, which was set up by former president Thabo Mbeki to probe his conduct, recommended that he be fired. They promised that if a recommendation for his dismissal went before Parliament for ratification, ANC MPs would be instructed to reject it. Full Sunday Times report (subscription needed) See also a City Press report

On the matter of the arms deal, Pikoli wrote that SA will never get to the bottom of what happened, because 'there is no political will to do so'. Zuma, he says, should have been charged for corruption related to the arms deal. Instead, the NPA was subjected to political interference, including the appointment of Menzi Simelane as its National Director of Public Prosecutions, who was later ignominiously forced out by court order, notes a Weekend Argus report. Pikoli also takes a swipe at the ANC, which never charged Zuma for sleeping with the daughter of his comrade, notwithstanding his acquittal for rape. 'I couldn't understand why the ANC never charged the man internally for misconduct. I felt he had brought the ANC into disrepute by admitting to having sexual intercourse with her without a condom. At a political level, that required decisive action on the part of the organisation,' he wrote. Full Weekend Argus report (subscription needed)