The motivation for prosecuting Malema isn’t relevant

When AfriForum announced it would start a private prosecutions unit, everyone assumed the first “victim” would be Jacob Zuma, but that isn’t possible now because the National Prosecuting Authority is continuing its Zuma prosecution.

So the next big fish was obviously going to be Julius Malema, because there’s always been abundant information that Malema, at the very least, has a case to answer for.

His family trust indisputably had shares in a company that was being handed lucrative contracts by government despite the fact that On Point Engineering had no track record and lacked skilled staff. Many of the projects they were given were not completed, done properly, or done at all.

The very same public protector Malema loves to praise for her work against Zuma found in 2012 that Malema and his partners had acted unlawfully, fraudulently and corruptly, and that “a crime” had indeed “been committed”.

As Advocate Gerrie Nel told us yesterday, the only reason the case against Malema went nowhere was because Malema’s co-accused Kagiso Dichaba was apparently too ill to stand trial. But AfriForum has now noticed that Dichaba is healthy enough to cycle, travel, pose in pictures with Cyril Ramaphosa and buy expensive sports cars.

We deserve to know if Malema was corrupt. He’s a person with great influence. To argue that he’s now a changed man and has redeemed himself carries no legal weight.

If you argue that AfriForum’s intentions are questionable or even racist, as Malema does, you would also have to give Zuma a free pass on his corruption charges, because the case against him also had questionable motives, and it’s also a very old case now, far older than Malema’s.

But the Supreme Court of Appeal made it clear that motives for prosecution are not legally relevant; what’s relevant is only whether any crime has actually been committed.

So if you don’t want to be in trouble, don’t do something wrong. If you are in trouble, calling the people asking questions about your track record racists can’t make it go away. Whether there may or may not be other people worthier of being targeted for prosecution is also neither here nor there.

Charles Cilliers.

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