Zuma resembles a shopper who won’t accept the fact that the jeans don’t fit

Jacob Zuma has a “no-strings-attached” relationship with the law. He reminds me of a tall, dark bartender you meet while you’re backpacking through South-East Asia on a gap year, full of passion and intensity but not looking for anything serious.

There could be something quite romantic about the character. I can see Regé-Jean Page playing him in an Eat, Pray, Love-style coming-of-age Netflix original.

Only we’re not talking about the cast of a made-for-TV movie.

We’re talking about a former head of state who took an oath – twice – to “to obey, observe, uphold and maintain the constitution and all other law of the Republic”, but who seems to see the constitution and the law as pieces of putty he can manipulate.

This, they are not. They are the bedrock of our hard-won democracy. As he himself has said, we’re all equal before the constitution and the law: they offer us all the same protections and we all have to abide by the same rules.

First there was the “rescission” application he brought to try and get the Constitutional Court to backtrack on its finding that he was in contempt for refusing to take the stand at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture de- spite having been ordered to, and giving him 15 months behind bars.

The Uniform Rules of Court only allow the court to rescind or vary “an order or judgment erroneously sought or erroneously granted in the absence of any party affected thereby; an order or judgment in which there is an ambiguity, or a patent error or omission, but only to the extent of such ambiguity, error or omission; an order or judgment granted as the result of a mistake common to the parties”. 

Zuma’s contempt case didn’t fit any of the requirements. Not one. But the Constitutional Court’s orders are not appealable and so, back against the wall, rescission was his only option. 

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“I’ll make it fit,” I imagine him saying to himself with the steely determination of someone trying to squeeze themself into the last pair of jeans at a sale, even though they’re too small. 

The apex court made predictably short shrift of his advance when it chucked out his “rescission” application – which it found was in fact “the stuff of an appeal” in any case – and slapped him with the costs earlier this month.

But the former president continued undeterred to try and bend the law to his liking last week, when his section 106(1)(h) special plea was finally heard in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg.

Section 106(1)(h) of the Criminal Procedure Act provides that: “When an accused pleads to a charge he may plead … that the prosecutor has no title to prosecute”. 

In essence, Zuma’s argument is that the lead prosecutor on his case, state advocate Billy Downer (and in fact the whole of the National Prosecuting Authority) is biased against him and thus has no title.

Don’t see how the two relate? Me neither. But again, maybe you see things differently after all your other attempts to wriggle out of being held to account have failed.

Lady Justice is not in her early 20s and trying to find herself on a beach in Bali. And while her wheels turn slowly, he would do well to remember they grind fine.