Zuma signed off nuclear deal days after he was treated for alleged poisoning in Russia – report

Former president Jacob Zuma signed the controversial nuclear deal with Russia after receiving treatment for alleged poisoning in that country eight years ago when he was president.

News24 reports that Zuma believed that his estranged wife Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma was sent by Western intelligence to poison him, making her the prime suspect.

However, local spooks and the Hawks found no evidence against Ntuli-Zuma and she was never prosecuted.

Zuma’s trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin saw him giving the nod to the country’s controversial nuke deal just two weeks after he was treated by Russian medics for the alleged poisoning, read the report based on revelations in an upcoming book titled ‘Nuclear.’

The book, due to be released this week, is authored by journalist Karyn Maughan and a former Treasury official Kirsten Pearson.

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‘Western spies’

The report details how Ntuli-Zuma told authorities in a statement in 2014 that Zuma believed that she colluded with foreign spies and poisoned him.

She denied the allegations to Zuma, after the latter told her he had documents that showed she was sent by “western spies.”

“The bizarre details of that alleged plot – which the National Prosecuting Authority later found there was no real evidence of – are contained in Nuclear, a new book on the Zuma administration’s ill-fated attempt to conclude an estimated R1 trillion nuclear deal with Russia,” read the News24 report.

Zuma was adamant that his wife fed him poison and was convinced that Putin was the only person who could resolve the matter.

‘The danger of depending on Russia for energy’

According to the authors, just 17 days after receiving treatment from Russian doctors that he credited with saving his life, Zuma signed off on a September 2014 inter-governmental agreement with Russian nuclear agency Rosatom.

The plan was to “create in South Africa a full-scale nuclear cluster of a world leader’s level – from the front-end of nuclear fuel cycle up to engineering and power equipment manufacturing”.

The deal was set aside by the Western Cape High Court in 2017 and declared invalid and unlawful. Non-government organisations  Earthlife Africa and the Southern Africa Faith-Communities’ Environmental Institute brought the case before the court.

In the ruling, Judge Lee Bozalek said the agreement had too many tax exemptions for Russia and placed a heavy financial burden on South Africa’s fiscus.

READ MORE: Too much money riding on nuclear build programme

The authors are of the view that that although there appears to be no documented incidence of Russia seizing a state’s assets to recoup debt owed to it, the minister of finance would have to find money to repay Russia or risk the country seizing state assets to recover the debt.

“Russian environmental activist Vladimir Slivyak, in the book, contends the danger of being dependent on the Kremlin for energy had profound geopolitical implications.

“He argues that it would have been incredibly difficult for the South African government not to comply with Russian’s decisions or policy directives if it were to have agreed to fund a nuclear build in South Africa.”

In other words, South Africa’s already deferential stance towards Russia would only have deepened if its agreement with Rosatom had been implemented.

“That deference had become strikingly apparent during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where South Africa appeared to be extremely reluctant to take the Kremlin on about, among other things, the reported killing of civilians,” the report states.

According to Nuclear, Rosatom’s plan was to use the nuke deal as the first step in a campaign to become a primary nuclear energy supplier to other African countries.

“This is what Russia does. They make you dependent on an energy source that they supply and then they control you. If you make a wrong decision, then they find a way to teach you a lesson about it,” Slivyak was quoted as saying.

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