By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Former president Jacob Zuma will appeal the judgment that dismissed his plea to have prosecutor Billy Downer recused.
Zuma filed a special application to have Downer taken off his case, accusing him of bias.
Judge Piet Koen dismissed Zuma’s application,paving the way for the corruption case against the former president to proceed. The trial will continue on April 11, 2022, said the judge.
“I conclude that Zuma’s complaints, even if taken at face value, do not affect the title of Downer to prosecute,” said Koen when delivering the judgment.
His legal team had raised 14 grounds for Downer to be recused, but Koen dismissed them after finding that many of them were “based on speculation or suspicion or are based on inadmissible hearsay evidence and not on fact”.
Now, the former president seeks to challenge Koen’s ruling, and has brought an application in which he argues “The Learned Judge (also referred to as the court a quo) erred and/or grossly misdirected itself” in several aspects of law.
The NPA confirmed that Zuma has filed application for leave to appeal the judgment on 10 November 2021,they will oppose the application at a date to be arranged with the court.
Zuma faces charges of corruption, fraud and money laundering related to the country’s controversial arms purchase in 1999. He is accused of receiving bribes from French arms company Thales through his former financial advisor Schabir Shaik, who was convicted of related charges in 2005.
“This has been quite a protracted process that now needs to come to an end,” National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga told reporters outside court, speaking of Zuma’s efforts to get the prosecutor dismissed and other tactics to delay the trial.
Zuma, 79, attended the court proceedings in one of his first public appearances since he was released from jail in September. He was released on medical parole after serving nearly two months of his 15-month jail sentence for defying an order of the Constitutional Court to testify at an investigation into corruption during his time as president from 2009 to 2018.