Zuma trial: Government must not back down now

There were many people who did not believe they would see the day that former president Jacob Zuma would be sentenced to a term behind bars, with none of it suspended, without the option of a fine.

That day was yesterday, when the Constitutional Court handed down a 15-month jail term for contempt of court.

But the sentence was much more than that – it was a resounding broadside in defence of the constitution of this country, which sets up our judicial system as the arbiter of how we run our society.

Never before – in the words of acting Chief Justice Sisi Khampepe, who handed down the court’s majority finding – “has this court’s authority and legitimacy been subjected to the kinds of attacks that Mr Zuma has elected to launch against it and its members. Never before has the judicial process been so threatened.”

Zuma’s defiance of the Constitutional Court order that he testify to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture was his second naked disrespect of our constitution.

The first resulted in him in being forced by the report of the then public protector, Thuli Madonsela, to initiate the Zondo commission.

But, as Zondo started to get closer and closer to him and his “Stalingrad defence” tactics – which he has used in his long-drawn-out corruption trial – began to crumble, Zuma revealed his true colours.

And those colours are clearly those of the typical despot and dictator, of the type which has visited ruin and suffering upon the African continent since independence from colonialism.

In characterising his prosecution and the Zondo commission as a political plot against him, Zuma suggested the courts were “undermining” the “will of the people”… and that parliamentarians should have the final say in everything.

That definition of the will of the people as the will of the ruling party has been used ad nauseam across Africa to justify corruption, tribalism and even genocide.

That is why it was so important for the Constitutional Court to continue what Khampepe said was its “lofty and lonely work of the judiciary, impervious to public commentary and political rhetoric, to uphold, protect and apply the constitution and the law at any and all costs”.

Nobody, she said, should be above the law. She wrote: “It is becoming increasingly evident that the damage being caused by his ongoing assaults on the integrity of the judicial process cannot be cured by an order down the line.

“It must be stopped now. Indeed, if we do not intervene immediately to send a clear message to the public that this conduct stands to be rebuked in the strongest of terms, there is a real and imminent risk that a mockery will be made of this court and the judicial process in the eyes of the public.”

Those are some of the strongest words yet uttered by a judicial officer in this country and reflect the fact that Zuma’s behaviour – and that of his supporters and cronies – goes much further than just theft and looting.

He and those who follow him are threats to our hard-won democracy.

The ANC government must not now, through executive order, give Zuma a pardon. Nor must it allow him to defy the police who will be sent to arrest him if he does not present himself voluntarily to serve his sentence.

That will negate the brilliant work done by the Constitutional Court judges.

Now read: Will Jacob Zuma ‘become a prisoner of the Constitutional Court’?