South Africa’s court rejects Zuma’s appeal to remove Chief Prosecutor

South African court has dismissed Ex-President Jacob Zuma’s attempt to remove the prosecutor from his upcoming corruption trial.

Zuma’s legal team sought to appeal an earlier ruling that rejected his effort to have the prosecutor taken off his corruption case.

The application was dismissed Wednesday by Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Piet Koen, on the grounds that Zuma’s attempt to remove the prosecutor “lacks reasonable prospects of success.”

Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s President from 2009 to 2018 before he was ousted by his African National Congress party amid wide-ranging allegations of corruption, had argued that Lead Prosecutor Billy Downer is biased against him.

Zuma’s lawyers accused Downer of leaking confidential information about his case to the media and being a witness in a separate case against him by the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.

The efforts to have Downer removed have delayed the start of Zuma’s corruption trial, which is now scheduled to begin on April 11.

Zuma is accused of receiving bribes from French arms manufacturer Thales through his former financial Adviser Schabir Shaik, who was convicted and sentenced on related charges in 2005. Downer led the prosecution that resulted in Shaik’s conviction.

Zuma’s lawyers still have the option to petition the country’s Supreme Court of Appeal, which could further delay the corruption trial.

It is important to anchor the point that Jacob Zuma was earlier sentenced to 15-months imprisonment over contempt charges after he failed to show up in court.

FLASHBACK

SA: Jacob Zuma begins 15 months jail term

Former South African President Jacob Zuma has begun his days in prison custody at exactly Estcourt Correctional Facility in Kwazulu Natal, a province in South African (SA) after the SA Court slapped him with a-15 month jail term over contempt charges.

His Excellency Zuma initially told journalists that he would not show up for the jail term contrary to the South African court order.

Former South African president Jacob Zuma removes his eyeglasses as he addresses the media in his home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal on July 4, 2021. – South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, ordered to surrender himself to start a 15-month jail term for contempt, said on July 4, 2021, he would not be doing so by the court-set deadline. “No need for me to go to jail today,” he told journalists at his Nkandla homestead in Kwa-Zulu Natal province, where hundreds of his supporters are camped outside in solidarity. 

But, the former South African Leader Jacob Zuma later surrendered himself upon rising intense pressures, a situation that would have landed him in double trouble.

The Spokesperson of Estcourt Correctional Facility in Kwazulu Natal, a province in South Africa Singabakho Nxumalo has announced adequate preparness to ensure that Former President Jacob Zuma is safe whilst in custody.

Singabakho Nxumalo noted that “as a department we must ensure that he is safe and respond to his immediate needs”.

In a televised program monitored by African Editors on Thursday 8 July 2021, Singabakho Nxumalo the ” democracy of South Africa has been tested as the statesman bows to the decision of the Court”.

The Former South African Leader Jacob Zuma is supposed to go through Covid-19 test and be isolated for fourteen days per the regulations of the Correctional Facility

Source: africaneditors.com