Is Zuma prolonging the inevitable or is strategy workable?

By: James N. Kariuki
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[ Posted On: 2008-08-25 ]

The ANC President, Jacob Zuma, faces serious charges of racketeering, corruption, fraud and tax evasion. If found guilty, he could go to jail for a long period — if his is handled as a normal case.

But, as things stand now, Zuma’s is not a normal case; it possesses several built-in contradictions.

Since his 2005 dismissal as the country’s deputy president for implication in a corruption case, Zuma has cried foul, insisting that his dismissal was actually a political conspiracy to prevent him from becoming President of South Africa. The suggestion here is that Zuma is innocent of the alleged charges.

But observers have noted that since 2005, he has spent little effort to demonstrate his innocence. An innocent man would have shown much interest in clearing his name through a speedy trial in order to proceed to run for the highest office in the land without a legal cloud hanging over him.

Zuma has done the exact opposite. First, he has done a superb job of fanning the conspiracy logic. Zuma’s supporters, otherwise known as the “Zuma camp” under the leadership of the trade unionists, the ANC Youth League and the South African Communist Party, have now taken up this line of reasoning.

The alliance has now hyped its opposition to any attempt to try Zuma to the undisciplined rhetoric, one that now includes talk of war.

On the legal front, Zuma has undertaken every legal ploy to defer or abort a trial. His activities have ranged from challenging the legality of documents currently in the hands of the state to thwarting acquisition of other documents relevant to the case from Mauritius.

Unfortunately, the delays have not done much good to his case. On matters relating to the contested documents, South Africa’s two highest courts have ruled in favour of the state. In other words, the National Prosecuting Authority can use all the contested documents in the case against Zuma.

On the face of the evidence available, it appears that the Zuma legal team is dead set on further delaying tactics. The question then arises: Is Zuma prolonging the inevitable? Not by any shot of the imagination.

According to the country’s political analysts, the strategy is to delay the legal process until he becomes the country’s president — after next year’s elections. At that juncture it will become infinitely more awkward for the National Prosecuting Authority to keep pressing about bringing a sitting president to trial. The political and the legal tiers of the matter will have converged.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: James N. Kariuki - is head of the African Diaspora Unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria.

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