ANC’s ‘flood’ excuse ‘childish’, like an attempt to ‘hide a pregnancy’

In the wake of news that President Jacob Zuma’s legal team has asked for information from the ANC about its financial records during the arms deal era – which the ANC has curiously claimed no longer exist – the former president’s spokesperson has said their excuses smack of a half-baked cover-up.

Zuma’s arms deal corruption trial is set to finally get under way after more than a decade and a half. He stands accused of accepting millions in bribes from arms company Thales, facilitated by his convicted former financial adviser Schabir Shaik.

Zuma’s latest legal strategy appears to be to point to others in the ANC, the organisation itself and even the Nelson Mandela Foundation, for allegedly being the ones who benefited from improper payments instead of himself.

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The ANC has claimed that it can’t honour his request for banking records because they were all destroyed in a mysterious flood or never existed in the first place.

The Mail & Guardian reported on Friday that Zuma’s legal team named the Nelson Mandela Foundation and others as recipients of donations from key players in the arms deal.

Zuma’s spokesperson, Mzwanele Manyi, confirmed that the intention from Zuma was to tell the truth about the arms deal.

Zuma has, for years, threatened to spill the beans on other people’s secrets in the ANC.

“The ANC must cooperate and not try to defeat the ends of justice by hiding information,” Manyi wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning. “The people of South Africa deserve the whole truth. The floods story is childish.”

Miracle floods

In an interview on SABC, he said: “The issue of the floods is quite an interesting one.” He said that he recalled that records had always been kept on higher floors at the ANC’s headquarters, even in the days when the party had operated from Shell House.

“Even at [current headquarters] Luthuli House, the office of the SG [secretary-general] is on the sixth floor. So as to how floods can just skip all these floors and just target the sixth floor, where all things are normally kept around the SG’s office, is just hilarious on one hand, but on the other quite sad that people can resort to such desperate measures of not being upfront with the truth.

“This is very bad; the ANC has got a very strong brand, and people that are managing this brand need to ensure that they maintain the integrity of this brand.”

Manyi called on “all those who hold the power to cooperate to make sure they don’t frustrate the ends of justice”.

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He said that what was happening was tantamount to defeating the ends of justice.

“We don’t want to go into a situation where we have to subpoena these things because there is that avenue that can be used.”

He likened the ANC’s attempt to avoid its past financial records coming to light as a futile attempt to hide a pregnancy.

“These transactions were electronic. So it’s not difficult to go to the bank and ask the bank to assist here. That would be very embarrassing to be going that route.”

The ANC’s lawyers Mncedisi, Ndlovu and Sedumedi (MNS) Attorneys this month responded in writing to tell Zuma that it was no longer in possession of the records his legal team has been looking for.

The firm told News24 this week that the ANC had “diligently searched for the documentation requested” but, “despite its best endeavours, the documentation could not be found”.

Supposedly: “All party documentation predating 2005, [was] damaged and/or destroyed as a result of flooding which occurred in the building where such documentation [was] archived.”

The ANC reportedly also claimed that no auditing had been conducted on any financial statements from “1997 up to and including 2000”.

Zuma’s lawyers have claimed that the financial statements will exonerate him from having benefited improperly from the arms deal.