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Lastest News Nigeria, Politics, Business, Sport, Interview
Former South African President, Jacob Zuma will face trial on corruption based charges after a court on Friday dismissed his application for a permanent stay of prosecution.
Zuma was accused of taking bribes from French defense company Thales in the 1990s; he however sought to have the case permanently dropped in March.
It is uncertain how long the trial will last and if truly South Africans will have answers for a case that has been on-going for almost 15 years. According to Zuma’s lawyers, they stated that the case is politically motivated owing to years of delay which might result in an unfair trial.
The trial is now expected to begin on Tuesday, 15th October, 2019, after the High Court Judge, Willie Seriti ruled Zuma’s “application for the permanent stay dismissed”. The judge agreed with the prosecution that parts of Zuma’s arguments to have the case thrown out were “scandalous and or vexatious”.
According to a report from Pietermaritzburg in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, it stated that the court ruling was handed down in less than two minutes.
The judge stated that, “However, the former president has the option to approach the Supreme Court to appeal this judgment and perhaps further delay his day in court. Zuma has said for a long time that he wants to have the opportunity to appear in court, but at the same he also tried to delay his appearance.”
Zuma was charged with a 16 counts of fraud, racketeering, and money-laundering relating to a multimillion-dollar arms deal dating back to before he took office in 2009. The charges first came up in 2005 but were later dropped by prosecutors in 2009, shortly before he became president, and reinstated in 2016.
He was also alleged to have taken the bribes during his time as a provincial economy Minister and later as deputy president of the ruling party, African National Congress (ANC) in the 1990s. Zuma was however forced to resign office in 2018 over a separate corruption scandal on his government.
