By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The private prosecution proceedings against State advocate Billy Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan will return to court in 2024.
The matter came before the High Court in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday, where it was postponed until April 2024.
The private prosecution was set aside as unlawful and an abuse of process in June.
Having failed in an appeal bid before the High Court, though, Jacob Zuma’s now approached the Supreme Court of Appeal in a bid to overturn that ruling and as a result, it currently stands suspended.
Downer and Maughan have secured a special order making that decision immediately enforceable pending the outcome of the appeal process.
But Zuma is appealing that special order too.
The High Court and the SCA have both found against him, but he’s now approached the Constitutional Court.
During proceedings, Judge Nkosinathi Chili ordered that Downer and Maughan need not attend court on the day and may be represented by their lawyers, with the same applying to Zuma.
Advocate Dali Mpofu, acting for Zuma, objected to Downer and Maughan not sitting in the dock when proceedings resumed on Wednesday. They were sitting in the public gallery.
Mpofu said Zuma and his lawyers are “here to protect the integrity of the courts” by insisting that Downer and Maughan sit in the criminal dock.
He argued that Downer and Maughan committed “contempt of court” by not sitting in the dock and maintains that “every minute that passes” in the hearing – without them sitting in the dock – contributes to “voluntary defiance” of the court.
Mpofu said that Downer and Maughan believe themselves to “be beneath the indignity of sitting in the dock”.
Their counsel, Andrew Breitenbach for Downer and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi for Maughan, argued that they didn’t have to sit in the dock.
After a short adjournment Chili refused Mpofu’s demand that the duo sit in the dock. The judge found their constitutional rights were hanging in the balance and decided to err on the side of caution.
Mpofu also attacked the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) for confirming the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg full bench’s finding that Zuma’s private prosecution was an abusive continuation of his Stalingrad legal strategy, in which he sought to avoid facing trial for corruption in the arms deal matter by bringing multiple legal challenges to the prosecution against him.
He insists the delays in Zuma’s case were not caused by him alone and denies that the cases he pursued were abusive.
But counsel for Downer and Maughan on Wednesday argued, as it stood, there was no valid private prosecution, pointing to case law on these kinds of special orders to the effect that “the decision made by the ‘next highest court’ in the appeal process is final”.
Zuma and French arms manufacturer Thales are facing multiple charges, including fraud‚ corruption, money laundering, and racketeering, in connection with the controversial multibillion-rand arms deal procurement concluded in the late 1990s while he was vice president.
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Video Courtesy of SABC.