Will high court force Jacob Zuma to represent himself?

Former president Jacob Zuma’s long-awaited corruption trial probably will not go ahead as planned next month, after news yesterday that he and his legal team at Mabuza Attorneys have parted ways and the court’s next move depends on how much patience it has for Zuma.

The development comes on the back of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) last week throwing out Zuma’s bid to overturn a judgment handed down by the High Court in Pretoria in 2018, which held that he had to foot the legal bill for his criminal case and ordered to repay millions of rands the state had forked out.

National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Sipho Ngwema yesterday insisted the state was still ready to proceed, but legal experts agree chances are the trial, set down for 17 May, will instead be postponed again.

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Mabuza Attorneys yesterday submitted an official notice of withdrawal to the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg, where Zuma and French arms dealer Thales are facing a raft of graft charges over a controversial multibillion-rand arms deal struck in the 1990s, when Zuma was the province’s MEC for economic development.

Among the allegations is that the former president received an annual kickback of R500 000 – paid via his former financial advisor and convicted fraudster, Schabir Shaik – in exchange for shielding Thales from an investigation into the deal. He is said to have accepted 783 dodgy payments from the company.

“Be pleased to take note that Mabuza Attorneys hereby withdraw as the attorneys of record for Accused No.1,” the notice submitted yesterday read.

Aside from indicating that Zuma’s last-known address was in Nkandla, it said nothing more and Eric Mabuza, who heads the high-profile firm, had not responded to request for comment at the time of publishing.

Dr Llewelyn Curlewis, a law lecturer at the University of Pretoria, said yesterday the court would now have to give a new legal team a decent opportunity to prepare and that this could take at least six months. In theory, he said, the court could reject the notice of withdrawal.

“In criminal cases you have to apply to the court to withdraw as an attorney of record and only with the permission of the court are you able to do so.” But this was unlikely.

“It’s an untenable situation and the courts are very reluctant to compel a lawyer to proceed with a matter where there’s an application for withdrawal,” he said.

Curlewis also pointed out that the court did have the prerogative to find Zuma was abusing the legal process and effectively force him to represent himself. But again, he said, this was unlikely.

Criminal law expert advocate James Grant pointed to the Criminal Procedure Act, which provides for courts to conduct inquiries into delays which appear to be unreasonable and – if warranted – refuse to postpone proceedings.

“But among the considerations are fault – and of course whether the person has done it before – and that usually features fairly high in the court’s mind,” he said.

“To my knowledge, [Zuma] hasn’t done this, at least, before, so it would be very difficult for the prosecution to ask the court to do that kind of inquiry and force him to proceed without legal representation.”

At this stage, it was unclear who Zuma planned on hiring to replace Mabuza Attorneys. But Grant also said competent attorneys generally came with a fairly high price tag.

“And the question is going to be whether Mr Zuma can afford that,” he said, adding if he had to try and secure funds, this could mean an even lengthier delay.

bernadettew@citizen.co.za