By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Former president Jacob Zuma’s application for leave to appeal a recent ruling on his private prosecution of State advocate Billy Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan, has been dismissed by three judges.
In delivering judgment on Monday, Judge Gregory Kruger said: “We arrived [at the conclusion] that there are no merits in any of the arguments raised by Zuma.”
Judge Kruger said, they had already “carefully considered” the grounds of appeal and dealt with them extensively in its original judgment.
Judge Kruger also said there were no novel issues raised, no prospects of success and that while it’s an important case, that was not a compelling reason to grant leave to appeal.
Zuma’s also been slapped with the costs.
In August, the court declined to suspend its 7 June ruling, which declared the former president’s private prosecution unlawful and set aside the matter, pending the final determination of the former president’s application for leave to appeal.
Downer and Maughan lodged an enforcement appeal, asking the high court for an order to block Zuma from further pursuing private prosecution against them while he appealed the matter.
But the former president took the enforcement order on appeal.
Zuma called for a dismissal of the enforcement order, arguing that the urgency of the enforcement application was contrived and amounted to an abuse of court processes.
The former president’s lawyer said no exceptional circumstances for the order had been established on a balance of probabilities adding that the underlying decision for the order was “inherently deficient and riddled with irregularities”.
Zuma and French arms company Thales face several charges including fraud, racketeering and money laundering linked to the multibillion-rand arms deal in 1999.
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