Arguing in court on Thursday on an interim interdict, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s lawyers said Jacob Zuma’s private prosecution attempt trampled on his rights. Zuma’s team accused the President of ‘arrogance’ and maintained he had been charged and must appear in court.
Despite being in and out of courtrooms on numerous occasions for years, former president Jacob Zuma had “never” thought that attending court as an accused was “beneath him”, advocate Dali Mpofu SC told a Full Bench of the Johannesburg High Court in a civil hearing on Thursday.
Mpofu was representing Zuma in his opposition to President Cyril Ramaphosa seeking an urgent interdict to stop his appearance in a criminal court on 19 January, for the private prosecution Zuma has brought against him.
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Ramaphosa contends that the endeavour is invalid, unlawful and unconstitutional.
The interdict application made by the President smacked of “arrogance”, Mpofu told judges Roland Sutherland, Edwin Molahlehi and Marcus Senyatsi, and was not a matter for the civil court.
“What we have here is a simple, pedestrian charge. A person has been charged and must come to court,” said Mpofu. Any issues Ramaphosa had relating to the private prosecution could be aired in a criminal court, he said.
A civil court did not have the capacity to understand the “nuances” that a criminal court did, said Mpofu, who denied there was any urgency to the application.
“Any person in this country who is accused of a crime, rightly or wrongly, has to suffer the inconvenience of attending court,” he said.
Zuma initiated the private prosecution of Ramaphosa on 15 December, the day before the governing party was to start its national elective conference, the conclusion of which saw Ramaphosa being voted in for a second term as ANC president. The timing of the summons led Ramaphosa to initially accuse Zuma of attempting to scupper his chances of re-election.
The former president has accused Ramaphosa of being an accessory after the fact to criminal conduct or, alternatively, of defeating or attempting to defeat the ends of justice, relating to the alleged unauthorised disclosure of medical information in Zuma’s private prosecution of veteran prosecutor Billy Downer — who will be prosecuting the Arms Deal graft trial in which Zuma is accused number one — and journalist Karyn Maughan.
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