Zuma appeal in Downer, Maughan private prosecution case fails

Former president Jacob Zuma has been dealt a blow after the application for leave to appeal the dismissal of his private prosecution against Advocate Billy Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan failed.

Zuma appeared in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday to appeal the court’s order that declared the setting aside of his private prosecution against Downer and Maughan was immediately enforceable.

A full bench of the Pietermaritzburg High Court dismissed the former president’s application with costs.

Judgment

In delivering the judgment, Judge Gregory Kruger said Zuma’s appeal had no merits.

Kruger said the court stands by its original reasons and conclusions and does not believe another court would come to a different conclusion.

“We arrived at the conclusion that there are no merits in any of the arguments raised by the applicant (Zuma).”

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, representing Maughan, referred to the finding that Zuma manufactured evidence against the journalist.

“In her affidavit she indicated that the respondent will stop at nothing to malign and falsely implicate her. As a further example to this, she alludes to the respondent’s reference that she delete her tweets of 9 August 2021 relating to the medical information.

“In support of the allegation he annexes this. However, such annexure does not support the contention, but rather to manufacture evidence against her,” Ngcukaitobi said.

Watch Zuma’s appeal:

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In August, the court declined to suspend its 7 June ruling, which declared the former president’s private prosecution unlawful and set aside the matter, pending the final determination of the former president’s application for leave to appeal.

In that ruling, judges Gregory Kruger, Jacqui Henriques and Mokgere Masipa deemed Zuma’s private prosecution against Maughan and Downer an abuse of power.

Downer and Maughan subsequently lodged an enforcement appeal, asking the high court for an order to block Zuma from further pursuing private prosecution against them while he appealed the matter.

Zuma called for a dismissal of the enforcement order, arguing that the urgency of the enforcement application was contrived and amounted to an abuse of court processes.

‘Myths’ about Zuma’s Stalingrad strategy

Advocate Dali Mpofu, representing Zuma, argued that there were “glaring myths” in the enforcement judgment. One of those was the Stalingrad strategy, something he said was nothing more than media hype,” News24 reported.

“No court has ever accepted it. This court rejected it twice,” Mpofu said.

He said the assertion that Zuma caused a 20-year delay in his criminal trial was untrue.

“The court accepted the Zuma delay theory, even though there is objective information to prove otherwise.”

He said 20 years should be revised to two to three years, because there were a number of court actions that were out of Zuma’s control.

Private prosecution

The former president instituted the private prosecution proceedings against the pair after he accused Downer – the lead prosecutor in his arms deal corruption trial – of leaking his confidential medical information to Maughan in August 2021.

Zuma claimed the “leak” was in breach of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Act.

However, Downer and Maughan challenged the private prosecution on the basis that Zuma’s medical information was publicly available in court documents and did not include confidential details.

Zuma and French arms company Thales face several charges including fraud, racketeering and money laundering linked to the multibillion-rand arms deal in 1999.

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