Zuma defence avoids plot theory
2006-09-07 08:17
Pietermaritzburg - For more than a year Zuma supporters have been fed allegations of a conspiracy against sacked deputy president Jacob Zuma, but his legal team on Wednesday steered clear of it in court.
Advocate Kemp J Kemp, SC, who is defending Zuma against the corruption charges for which he is being tried along with the French arms manufacturer Thint, said on Wednesday in his argument against the State's request to postpone the case that the defence will not rely on the argument that Zuma has "already been found guilty in the court of public opinion", as the allegations "rest mainly on hearsay".
He moved his sights instead to the State's insistence on amending the indictment, problems the State might encounter in obtaining from overseas certain documents on which their case might rest, and the unlikelihood that the state will be able to finalise the indictment by October 15, as it has undertaken to do.
During his argument, Kemp was forced on to the back foot several times by Judge Herbert Msimang, who has shown in the past few days that his unusually participative and at times combative style applies to all legal teams.
Among other things, Kemp largely had to abandon the important allegation from the Zuma camp that the ANC deputy leader has been waiting for as long as six years to be charged.
Msimang strongly indicated that he is considering only the period since June last year when Advocate Vusi Pikoli, national director of public prosecutions, decided to prosecute Zuma.
On a day that ended well for Zuma, Kemp nevertheless had to make some important concessions.
His claim that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) should have consulted afresh with Zuma before charging him was so strongly dismissed as erroneous by Advocate Wim Trengove, SC, for the State, that Msimang agreed with him.
The same thing happened when Trengove disagreed with Kemp's argument that the NPA had closed the investigation against Zuma by 2002 and could not, therefore, continue with it. Msimang agreed with Trengove.