A recording of a closed, high-level ANC meeting has surfaced, where ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte can be heard telling fellow officials that they should find a “solution” for former president Jacob Zuma, after he defied a Constitutional Court order.
The order related to his refusal to appear before the state capture inquiry chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
Duarte mentioned the “personal antagonism” between Zuma and Zondo, who fathered a child with the sister of a woman who later became one of Zuma’s wives.
This, she said, would prejudice Zuma as well as the “unfortunate way in which Judge Zondo presented himself after he presided, as Comrade Zuma said, over his own case of bias”.
Duarte also took issue with Zondo who “made statements about he’s (Zuma) not my friend”. “It doesn’t augur well for a judge to go into that granular kind of detail.” She also said she believed that the commission of inquiry had been turned into “a court of law”.
Duarte said the possibility was proposed “of approaching the chief justice”. She added, however, that the party wasn’t “confident about the judiciary at the moment” and that she would like to hear from Zuma “whether or not he would not still be prepared to consider that element”.
Duarte said she had no confidence in Mogoeng because he “behaves as if he has no understanding of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, because of the value he attached to his Christianity.”
“Any regime that is attached to religion is a disaster” Duarte said, mentioning the apartheid regime and that of the former German leader Adolf Hitler as examples.