Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2009-02-20 Reporter:

What could happen if approach to NPA fails

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2009-02-20

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za



If African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma fails to persuade the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to drop its charges against him, he will be left with only one way to avoid trial: a permanent stay of prosecution, his application for which is set down for hearing in the Pietermaritzburg High Court in August, writes Franny Rabkin.

Zuma’s lawyer Michael Hulley said last week that he preferred not to comment on the legal basis of the application because it was so far off. Hulley said: “For now, we are focusing on the representations (to the NPA, seeking to have the charges against Zuma dropped) and the Constitutional Court appeal.”

But clues as to what direction the application for the permanent stay will take can perhaps be found in Zuma’s court papers before Judge Chris Nicholson last year, and in comments made by the ANC. From these, it appears that Zuma’s application could be made on one or all of the following bases ­ first, that there was an unreasonable delay in his case coming to trial. Second, that there was political interference in the decision to prosecute Zuma. Finally, that the extent and detail of the media coverage has been such that Zuma would never be able to get a fair trial.

With acknowledgements to Business Day.


The facts is still the facts.

Judges (at least good or reasonable ones) deal with facts.

It is not a fact that there has been unreasonable delay.

Unreasonable delay would be something like 20 years, in this case it's about three years, six years at worst.

And of the delay the accused is responsibly for at least half of it.

It is not a fact that there was political interference to charge him, although it is a fact that there was political interference not to charge him. The accused has had about a dozen opportunities using our tax to make the case, but his advocates are too shy to bullshit the courts. There is no evidence and no facts.

But there is a Himalayan mountain of factual evidence proving his guilt that if the judge woke up on the wrong side of the bed on the day he handed down sentence, the accused could get 100 years incarceration.

Co-accused Thomson-CSF could be prevented from trading it's noxious wares again in the country for the next 50 years.

These are the fictions and the facts.