No, I am not your friend – Zondo denies Zuma’s statement

Former president Jacob Zuma might have friends in high places, but Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo isn’t one of them.

Speaking at the start of Monday’s proceedings at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, the deputy chief justice said he and Zuma did not socialise together and that they never had.

He was responding to Zuma’s application to have Zondo recuse himself as commission chair.

“Mr Zuma’s statement that we are friends is not accurate,” Zondo said.

Monday’s proceedings started with arguments in Zuma’s application for Zondo’s recusal and the deputy chief justice reading a statement on their relationship into the record.

Zuma, in the founding papers, described the pair’s relationship as “personal”, going so far as to say they had been “friends”. He claimed they had “constantly met on social occasions and [at] public gatherings that were organised by the government” as well as that Zondo had visited his house “on several occasions”.

But Zondo said this was not the case.

He said he had been to Zuma’s house on two occasions – once for a meeting more than 13 years ago and again to pay his respects after a death in the family. But that Zuma had never been to his house.

“And I’ve never invited him,” he said. “He has only met my wife at the opening of parliament and other government functions.”

ALSO READ: Zuma not accusing Zondo of bias, but some comments ‘crossed the line’

Zondo pointed out that Zuma had not been invited to the farewell party his former law firm had thrown him before he was appointed as a judge in 1997, or to any of his birthday parties or family members’ funerals, either.

And he dismissed Zuma’s claims in the papers that after Zondo had been appointed as a judge, the two had discussed whether or not their relationship would jeopardise his career.

“I understood and appreciated that he wanted to draw a line under my relationship with him that would not create the public perception that he relied on me, as president, to rise in his judicial career,” Zuma said.

“No such discussion ever took place,” said Zondo yesterday. “As he was not president and an MEC [for economic development in KwaZulu-Natal]. He could not have influenced my rise in my career”.

ALSO READ: Setting up state capture commission was ‘politically motivated’ – Zuma’s lawyer

In recent weeks and months, Zuma and his allies have laid into Zondo and the commission – spurring the deputy chief justice to eventually disclose last month that he and Zuma’s sister-in-law had had a relationship in the early 1990s and shared a child.

But advocate Muzi Sikhakhane, for Zuma, went to pains yesterday to emphasise the application for Zondo to recuse himself was not based on the notion that Zondo had prejudged Zuma.

Rather, Sikhakhane said, some of Zondo’s comments during proceedings had made Zuma feel as being unfairly persecuted.

“There have been times where I believe you have crossed the line when it comes to expressing your outrage as a presiding official,” Sikhakhane said, “We understand judges must listen to frustrating things. The outrage may even be justified. But, like a judge who has to listen to cases involving the rape of a two-year-old, what are you meant to do?”

Evidence leader advocate Paul Pretorius, however, was having none of it.

Among the offending comments cited in the founding papers was the messages of thanks Zondo offered Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and his predecessor, Barbara Hogan, at the close of their testimonies.

“Chair, your approach consistently throughout this commission from beginning to end is to thank witnesses for coming forward and giving their versions … That [that] somehow is an expression of a reasonable apprehension of bias is untenable,” Pretorius said yesterday.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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