Fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik on Thursday blamed his accountants and auditors for the irregular write-off of payments to Deputy President Jacob Zuma as development costs in his businesses and the creation of a non-distributable reserve, by saying that he has nothing to do with the accounting.

He said he had no formal accounting education and when he did study accounting at school, he performed "miserably".

Shaik said he is an entrepreneur and not an accountant, and relied on internal and external accountants and auditors to perform financial duties in his Nkobi group.

He did not meet with auditors to discuss the write-off and creation of the reserve. Last year, two auditors told the court that Shaik was present at the meeting.

The tension with his legal team, which ran high on Wednesday, seemed to have subsided on Thursday, but Shaik often did not follow his advocate Francois Van Zyl's questions. He claimed he could not hear because the members of the state's legal team were talking too loud.

Judge Hillary Squires told Shaik that the state prosecutors needed to discuss issues arising from his testimony. However, with a smile, Squires advised them to tone down.

Later Shaik confirmed that a meeting did take place between Zuma, Thomson-CSF Holdings South African boss Alain Thetard and himself, but said a "donation" was discussed and not a bribe, as the state alleges.

Before relating details of the meeting, Shaik said that when he acted as a patron for Zuma's RDP Education Fund by requesting a donation from Thomson-CSF, he found that "his relationship with the French was becoming increasingly distrustful".

Not only was he approaching a company for which he was losing respect, but he was aggravated by their deception when it came to his workshare right in their joint consortium under the umbrella of African Defence Systems.

Describing the meeting on March 10, 2000 at King's House, Zuma's official residence in Durban, he said he introduced Thetard to the deputy president and the men discussed the possibility of Thomson-CSF donating funds to Zuma's education fund.

He said the discussions only related to the education fund.

Shaik said documents on which the state is relying to convict him were misinterpreted as there was no talk of a bribe. Also, he does not understand what Thetard meant when he wrote to Thomson-CSF Paris headquarters informing his bosses of a secret code between the three men.

He said there was no need for a code as they only discussed a donation.

Shaik said he has no knowledge of the notorious encrypted fax that the state alleges is Thetard's record of the bribe agreement.

He said that the "other shareholder" to whom he referred in the a letter to Thomson-CSF expressing his dissatisfaction with their business management was him - not Zuma or the ANC, as the state alleges.

His anger again boiled over at this point - against "the French".

"Beware of the French," he said. "The French cannot be trusted."

With acknowledgements to Nivashni Nair and The Natal Witness.

*1 Exactly, in logic it goes like this :

A code was indeed used (because the author of the record has affirmed under oath that he wrote the record which includes the reference to the code), therefore they did not discuss a donation. If they did discuss a payment of money and this was not a donation (or any other lawful payment), then this must have been an unlawful payment and most probably a bribe - QED.

*2 Just about the first true thing Shaik has said in court in four months.