Union overjoyed at Zuma ruling

2008-09-12 17:22

Johannesburg - The South African State and Allied Workers' Union on Friday, said it was thrilled and overjoyed at Justice Chris Nicholson finding that charges against African National Congress President Jacob Zuma were invalid.

"This judgment is a powerful and forceful repudiation of the disgusting, nauseating and entirely false characterisation of the ANC president by the cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro as a rapist of the justice system.

"It is actually the likes of Shapiro and other so-called opinion-makers who have been raping Zuma's rights to human dignity and in particular his right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law," said general secretary Mthimkulu Mashiya.

He said Zapiro and others never accepted Zuma's acquittal on the trumped-up rape charges.

"It remains to be seen whether they will accept Justice Nicholson's judgment," he said.

"We have always maintained that this was a political trial that was hatched by the 1996 class project in a vain attempt to consign Jacob Zuma to political oblivion.

"The shameless abuse of state institutions, such as the [National Prosecting Authority (NPA)], to settle political scores has been exposed for all to see."

He said the NPA should now leave Zuma alone.

- SAPA