By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State Attorney and Presidency have launched legal action to compel former president Jacob Zuma to repay nearly R29 million in legal fees for his corruption trial defence.
This comes two years after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ordered the State Attorney to “take all necessary steps, including the institution of civil proceedings, to recover the amounts paid by the state for Zuma’s legal costs”.
According to News24, the legal action by the State Attorney and Presidency comes months before the court-ordered claim against Zuma would have prescribed.
State Attorney Isaac Chowe clarified in papers filed at the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria that an error had been made in the initial demand letter sent to Zuma.
“The total amount of R18 261 347.72, which was stated in the letter of demand, was based on the record of payments that could be traced at that stage, and after a diligent search and verification of the record of payments was conducted during the preparation of this application, it appeared that further monies were expended on Mr Zuma’s behalf totalling the sum of R10 699 426.62,” he said.
Chowe said the purpose of the government’s litigation was to now “seek an order … directing [Zuma] to repay all the costs or that were paid by the state on his behalf in respect of legal costs that were incurred by him in his personal capacity in the criminal prosecution instituted against him, and all related or ancillary litigation.”
It is unclear, at this point, why it has taken the State Attorney well over two years to collect information about how much money it had given Zuma, given that lawyers for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) had obtained and submitted detailed information about these claims, as part of the party’s successful challenge to the former president’s untrammelled legal funding by the state.
That litigation, which was also pursued by the Democratic Alliance (DA), saw the SCA confirm there was no legal justification for the Presidency to fund Zuma’s defence in the arms deal-related corruption, racketeering, tax evasion and fraud case against him.
The SCA also endorsed the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria’s order that the State Attorney should do everything legally possible to recover the taxpayers’ money spent on Zuma’s corruption trial litigation.
While Zuma had argued that withdrawal of state funding of these costs would be a violation of his constitutional rights, the SCA in 2021 rejected that argument and found that “allowing officials to resist being held accountable, by drawing on state resources to obstruct or delay a prosecution” subverted the public’s interests.
It further found that Zuma had been given untrammelled state funding of his legal costs from the Presidency in an unlawful “blank cheque” arrangement that it slammed as “egregious”.
Meanwhile support for the embattled 81-year-old was particularly strong in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal — a key electoral battleground — with 63 percent of respondents there saying they felt warmly about him, according to the Social Research Foundation (SRF), a pollster.
The southern African country is to hold its general elections later this year in what is expected to be the most competitive vote since the advent of democracy in 1994.
Last month, Zuma, a former ANC stalwart, said he would be campaigning for the recently formed Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) party.
The SRF surveyed 1,400 registered voters nationwide and 2,400 in KwaZulu-Natal before the announcement was made in September and October last year.
It asked them to rate how they felt about Zuma on a scale of zero to 100. Nationwide, 28.9 percent said they saw him very or somewhat favourably.
Yet, the SRF warned that favorability does not easily translate into electoral support in the absence of a strong party infrastructure.