The Democratic Alliance has filed papers in the Constitutional Court opposing former president Jacob Zuma’s latest attempt to avoid repaying the nearly R29million he owes the State for his personal legal costs.
Zuma is seeking leave to appeal after both the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria and the Supreme Court of Appeal refused him leave. According to the DA, his application has no reasonable prospects of success and raises no genuine constitutional issue.
In 2018, a unanimous Full Bench (three judges) of the high court found that Zuma was liable to repay the amounts the State had paid on his behalf towards his personal legal costs in his criminal prosecution and related litigation.
That judgment was upheld by the SCA. The DA said Zuma is now trying to reopen a question that the courts have already settled. The only issue that remained was for the State Attorney to quantify the amount owed and to then recover the money. After a considerable delay, the State Attorney produced an accounting of the amounts paid, totaling R28,960,774. The high court then ordered Zuma to repay this amount, with interest.
“This case is about a simple principle: public money must be used for the public, not to fund the private legal battles of powerful politicians. No person, including a former president, is above the law. Mr Zuma received an unlawful benefit from the State. He must pay it back,” the DA said.
Judge Anthony Millar last year turned down Zuma’s application for leave to appeal the repayment judgment. Judge Millar said that he is not persuaded that another court would come to a different conclusion.
“To keep the doors of the court open indefinitely to a litigant who refuses to accept the judgment on a particular matter, serves no legitimate purpose. All it does is serve to drain scarce judicial resources and to strengthen the view that accountability can be deferred for so long as one has the means to do so,” the judge commented at the time.
He added that it is destructive of the notion that all are equal before the law and confirms the view that “there is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot”.
Lawyers representing Zuma believe state officials who unlawfully granted him the money for his legal fees should be held accountable. Advocate Thabani Masuku for Zuma earlier told the court that his client was not granted the money through corruption, but that the legal fees were paid from the State coffers following incorrect legal advice to the State.
He said while Zuma did benefit from the money, it was not his doing that it was given to him. Those officials who allowed the State to pay for his legal fees up until the court in 2019 put an end to this should be held liable to pay the money back as it was irregular expenditure, Masuku said.
In his latest Constitutional bid, Zuma said this case raises important Constitutional issues pertaining to the State’s liability for its own “unconstitutional conduct.” But the DA said in its court papers that all the arguments Zuma is now raising in avoiding paying the money are irrelevant, as the only issue which served before the high court was the amount due.
Zuma is also aggrieved by the fact that the high court ordered him to pay interest on the outstanding amount – a prayer asked for by the DA and granted by the court. He further maintains that he has no means of paying back the multi millions as calculated by the State Attorney.
zelda.venter@inl.co.za
