By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Jacob Zuma has launched a Constitutional Court appeal application aimed at ensuring his prosecutor Billy Downer’s removal and his acquittal on Arms Deal corruption charges.
The application follows Zuma being denied leave to appeal by the high court and the supreme court of appeal. The president of the latter dismissed a reconsideration application, which Zuma then tried — unsuccessfully — to challenge in the apex court.
Zuma is due back in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday, where the various applications to challenge trial judge Piet Koen’s dismissal of the plea have forced long postponements and probably have put paid to trial starting this year.
The plea was two fold. Zuma argued, in terms of section 106 (1)(h) of the Criminal Procedure Act, that Downer lacked title to prosecute him because he had abandoned impartiality.
His lawyers contended that if the court agreed with this, he then qualified for acquittal in terms of section 106(4) of the act.
Dismissing the plea, Koen said legal precedent was clear that complaints about lack of impartiality, whatever the grounds, do not affect the title to prosecute for the purposes of section 106 (1)(h).
Precedent was equally fatal to part two of Zuma’s plea and his argument that should Downer be removed, acquittal must follow because the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) as a whole was incompetent to pursue the graft charges against him.
In February, Koen said there was no reasonable prospect that Zuma would succeed on appeal and the appellate court concurred.
In his application to the constitutional court, Zuma insists that Koen misapplied the law and reiterates should he prove successful on appeal, he would be entitled to acquittal on the charges that have haunted him since 2007.
“This would have put an end to over 20 years of prosecutorial harassment in which a clear pattern of criminal acts adopted by Downer and his fellow officials of the NPA was closely associated with my prosecution or investigation,” he claims in an affidavit signed on Thursday.
Zuma has since stepped up his attack on Downer by launching a private prosecution in which he purports to charge the veteran prosecutor with breach of section 41 of the National Prosecuting Act.
He accuses Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan of disclosing documents in possession of the NPA without the permission of the national director of public prosecutions. At issue is a copy of an affidavit filed by Downer in response to an application from Zuma for a postponement in his corruption trial.