EDITORIAL | Zuma can play games, but ConCourt makes the rules The withdrawal of his lawyers from his corruption case presents another opportunity for Stalingrad tactics 22 April 2021 - 20:49
We’ve seen this movie before. Former president Jacob Zuma’s lawyers on Wednesday withdrew their services in his corruption trial in the Pietermaritzburg High Court. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) insisted the state remained ready to proceed with the trial in May. But of course this creates another opportunity for Zuma to delay the matter.
This development comes the same month the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) closed the taps on state funding for his legal woes. Zuma lost an appeal against a high court judgment that found the state was not liable for his legal costs. In December 2018, the North Gauteng High Court made a personal costs order against him when he turned to the courts to review then public protector Thuli Madonsela’s “State of Capture” report. The st
Andrew Mkhondo
Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has unreservedly apologised for wrongly accusing Judge Sulet Potterill of deliberately omitting words of the Executive Ethics Code, in a ruling she gave in favour of Pravin Gordhan.
But Mkhwebane nevertheless insisted the 15% personal costs order granted against her by the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for, among other things, her shockingly inappropriate personal attack on Potterill was unwarranted, and part of a tendency by that court to grant such orders against her. This tendency points to a worrying trend and legitimate concerns of institutionalised judicial bias against the Public Protector particularly in the North Gauteng High Court, Mkhwebane s lawyers argued in an appeal application due to be heard on Friday.
Rainbow Nation Report
Photo credit: Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What do an airline bankruptcy, a national post office bankruptcy, a Road Accident Fund bankruptcy, a city’s largest hospital burning down because the fire hydrants weren’t maintained, and parts of a nation’s oldest university destroyed by arson have in common? They all happened in the last four weeks in South Africa, the Rainbow Nation that was supposed to show the world how wonderful things would be if only whites were driven from power.
1. The end of South African Airways
New SAA CEO only knowledge of airlines is as a passenger. Daft Bound to fail.
Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has argued that a full bench of the North Gauteng High Court erred when it overturned her report on the so-called SARS “rogue unit” and lumped her with a personal costs order for her “egregious” conduct.
Mkhwebane and the EFF’s application for leave to appeal the December 2020 judgment was heard in a virtual sitting of the court on Friday, 23 April 2021.
That judgment dismissed the findings in Mkhwebane’s July 2019 report, which found that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan had established an illegal intelligence-gathering unit while he was SARS commissioner in 2007. Mkhwebane also found Gordhan had misled Parliament on the issue.
SCA ruling confirms Zuma must pay back the money – DA 14 April 2021 - 08:46
The Supreme Court of Appeal s (SCA s) dismissal of former president Jacob Zuma s appeal against a judgment which ruled that the state is not liable to cover his legal costs has been hailed as a step that will see Zuma repay more than R10m.
The SCA yesterday dismissed Zuma s appeal with costs on a punitive scale after he had challenged a ruling of the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria which found in December 2018 that the state was not liable for Zuma s legal costs which have been incurred in his personal capacity.