On the eve of Jacob Zuma’s inauguration as South African President, the judge whose decision was key to dropping corruption charges against the ANC president has said that the country’s chief prosecutor made a mistake in law.

Mpshe

Acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority Mokotedi Mpshe last month controversially dropped a corruption prosecution against Zuma, saying the investigation had been tainted by an apparent conspiracy by former Scorpions head Leonard McCarthy and ex-NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka. He used a case in Hong Kong as one of this key reasons for dropping the charges.

But the former Hong Kong judge behind that important decision, Justice Conrad Seagroatt, who earlier commented to Grubstreet on Mpshe’s plagiarism of his judgment, has now told me that Mpshe was wrong to use his judgment to justify dropping the charges against Zuma, due to be inaugurated as president of South Africa at the Union Buildings in Pretoria tomorrow.

He said, echoing the sentiments of other top SA prosecutors and widely reported in the local press, that he should have allowed the case to go to trial.

It is very strongly arguable that he should have let the trial process begin before a judge, leaving the aspect which seems to have dominated his proper role as the prosecutor (the old adage being a ‘prosecutors’ job is to prosecute) to be determined by the judge with [Mpshe] being entirely candid (as he should be) as to the conduct of the investigative and prosecuting agencies. It is easy from my position in the U.K. (or Hong Kong) to be critical of Mpshe’s statement but being as objective as I can, he really did not get to grips with the situation and seems to have made selective use of my judgement to try and put some beef into a statement which is rather short on substance.

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The new stars of the show are undoubtedly former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy and former NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka after being implicated in a political conspiracy against ANC president Jacob Zuma.

"Did you say conspire or perspire?"

When he announced his decision to drop all charges against Zuma, acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe indicated that there would be a commission of inquiry into the two men’s conduct but a senior NPA source has told the The Times that, in fact, they will be prosecuted. Read the story here though both men declined to comment.
Now the focus has shifted (Zuma sighs with relief) and we’re going to be seeing and hearing a lot about Ngcuka and McCarthy over the next year so what are they up to these days?

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1. Packing for Perth or just another day in South Africa? Today it’s all about analysing the NPA’s decision to drop the charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma. One of the best comes Tim Cohen who wrote in the Daily Dispatch that the NPA decision shows us that the dream of South Africa having a special claim to the moral highground is dead.

We can claim no special place, no special rights, no special privileges. We are no longer miracle workers, just another grubby participant in the carnival of global politics, subject to base desires, enduring of haughty leaders, ever hopeful of finding just one decent person to carry our banner. Never before has the true nature of the South African State been so obvious, so plainly laid open to public view and so revealing for what it is. Much as we pretend otherwise, the hard truth is we live in a quasi-totalitarian State. And the rules that apply to single-party dominant States apply to us, too, though we pretend they don’t.

Read the full piece here.

2. Veteran investigative hack Sam Sole at the Mail & Guardian has an excellent, insightful piece on the tangled web around the arms deal involving Schabir Shaik and Zuma’s alleged role in it. Was Zuma Shaik’s puppet or a mercenary trying to squeeze as much money as he could out his old struggle buddy? It is well worth a read. Click here.

3. Senior Counsel Paul Hoffman says that the acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe’s concession that the prosecution team, led by Billy Downer, remains of the view that any decision in the matter ought to go court has laid the door wide open to civil litigation — including an urgent application for an order interdicting Zuma from accepting nomination for the presidency.

The fundamental error in his reasoning is that he is unable to point to any prejudice in the legal (as against political) sense that Zuma can possibly claim to have suffered as a consequence of being charged after the ANC’s Polokwane conference rather than before it. The subsidiary decision to withdraw charges against Thint (the arms dealer in question) highlights the fallacy in the reasoning of the NPA. Thint was obviously not a candidate at Polokwane and the two-week difference in timing of the arraignment of both accused is therefore neither here nor there .

Read the full piece here.

4. DA leader Helen Zille says on her Facebook page that party “is now finalising its plan to take the matter further through the legal system“.

5. A senior NPA official told The Times’s that the NPA is, in fact, going to prosecute former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy and former NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka for violating sections of the NPA Act — rather than recommending an inquiry as indicated by Mpshe. Read the story here. And to throw my two cents in here, suspended police commissioner Jackie Selebi could now escape trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice on the same basis as Zuma (because there was a political conspiracy against him) after being referred to in the transcripts of tapped phone conversation between Ngcuka and McCarthy. If you’ve forgotten what that’s about, click here to read the charge sheet at Financial Mail’s website.

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The National Prosecuting Authority are between the devil and deep blue when it comes ANC president Jacob Zuma. If they drop the corruption, racketeering, tax evasion and fraud charges against him, they will be accused of sacrificing their independence and subverting the rule of law. If they press on, the Zuma camp will accuse them of being part of a continuing political conspiracy against him.

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1. The thot plickens! Bulelani Ngcuka, the former National Prosecuting Authority head, is now accused of calling the shots — with businessmen Saki Macozoma — at the Congress of the People, leading to the “imposition” of Bishop Mvume Dandala as Cope’s presidential candidate, says a Cope member who has defected back to the ANC.

This comes after revelations that ANC President Jacob Zuma’s legal team have phone recordings of Ngcuka, Macozoma and former president Thabo Mbeki that they have presented to the National Prosecuting Authority. Read the full story at The Times.

2. Meanwhile, Business Day reports that Mbeki denies he meddled in the investigation into Zuma. Read the full story here.

3. And the Mail & Guardian is reporting that the NPA’s leaders are divided on whether the corruption and racketeering charges against Zuma should be dropped. An announcement is due early next week.

4. The M&G is also reporting that Cope is accusing Mlungisi Hlongwane, the defector responsible for the allegation that Ngcuka and Macozoma are Cope’s puppet masters, was an ANC mole all along and blames him for the party’s late start to their election campaign. Read the story here.

5. Back at The Times, suspended police chief Jackie Selebi is denying knowledge of the tapped phone calls of Ngcuka, Mbeki, Macozoma and former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy. This after, says the paper, it has established that SAPS members were involved in the eavesdropping operation. Read the story here.

Shjoe! The war is getting dirty. They say a week in politics is a long time and next week’s going to be a cooker!

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1. Business Day has a cooker of a story. The evidence ANC president Jacob Zuma’s legal team gave to the National Prosecuting Authority included taped conversation — allegedly gathered by state intelligence agencies — between former president Thabo Mbeki and former Scorpions head Leonard McCarthy. Says the newspaper:

The recorded conversations include a host of other prominent players in the Zuma drama, many now involved in one way or another with ANC rival the Congress of the People, including the former head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Bulelani Ngcuka, and businessmen Saki Macozoma and Mzi Khumalo.

Read the full story here.

2. Over at The Times, they’re reporting that the tapes included conversations between Ngcuka and McCarthy. Ngcuka is threatening to take “the legal route” and also that:

It is a matter of grave concern that in a democratic state — which has an entrenched bill of rights, which, among other [things], safeguards the rights of citizens to privacy — you could have surveillance by a state agency and the product of that surveillance be made available to the lawyers of an accused person in a criminal trial.

Oh, the tangled webs we weave. Remember, Ngcuka is accused by Zuma of conducting a vendetta against him while NPA head. Ngcuka also said incredibly indiscreet things about Zuma and his buddies at an off-the-record briefing with black editors. Then he went on to announce to the country that there was prima facie evidence to prosecute Zuma and he would not do so. Can’t Zuma and Ngcuka take it outside and sort out their differences once and for all? Read the full story at The Times here.

3. The Democratic Alliance won landslide victories in two by-elections held in Cape Town, including taking Mitchells Plain from the Independant Democrats. Read the story on News24 here.

4. Something is afoot at the SABC as Christine Qunta, it’s deputy chairman, has resigned. This comes only a week before the board appears before Parliament’s communications portfolio committee to account for various problems at the national broadcaster. Read the story at The Times here.

5. And ANC Youth League President Julius Malema is “actually standing up to reflect where we should go,” says TV personality and former Muvhango actor, Mpho Tsedu (who is clearly looking for a nice fat ANCYL salary). “If there are grey areas, he’s able to stand up and point to those grey areas,” he said. Sage words but what do they mean? Read the story at the Sowetan here.

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1. Today’s Mail & Guardian has an interesting insight into what’s going on behind closed doors at the National Prosecuting Authority regarding ANC president Jacob Zuma’s case. His legal team told the NPA at the meeting this week they should drop the corruption charges because of two new pieces of evidence.

No further details were released, but the Mail & Guardian has established that the two principal strands of evidence put before Mpshe concern:

* Mbeki’s role in the 1999 arms deal and new details of his alleged involvement in impropriety in the awarding of contracts for new defence equipment.
* Claims that Mbeki influenced the Scorpions’ controversial “Special Browse Mole” report, which raised concerns about funding and support for Zuma from Libya and Angola as well as the possibility of violent resistance to his prosecution.

What Zuma told the NPA

2.  The Times is reporting that Zuma’s legal team has pinned its hopes on potentially embarrassing tapes of Scorpions investigators allegedly discussing the case against him with former National Prosecuting Authority boss Bulelani Ngcuka. Click here.

3. And IOL’s got a good story on Willem’s Heath powerful role as deal maker in all of this. Read it here.

4. Here’s a cool little story at the Daily Dispatch about how a brewing mistake and a chance online meeting has led to a Grahamstown meadery (yup, that stuff Robin Hood and his Merry Men used to drink) earning it a world-wide reputation as a leader in mead technology. Read it here.

5. And it’s looking up at the oval. We bowled the Ozzies out for 209 yesterday and we’re going into the second day of the Cape Town cricket Test 57 without loss. Although we’ve already lost the Test series (it’s the best of three) we might at least end it with a modicum of respectability.

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