Former President Jacob Zuma has been left liable for legal fees of about R10m.
The Constitutional Court heard how Zuma’s challenge was “defective” and he failed to follow its instructions, including filing papers with his argument against a punitive high court order affirmed in the appeals court last year.
Acting deputy chief justice Sisi Khampepe struck the matter from the roll with costs.
In 2018, the high court ordered Zuma to personally pay opponents’ legal fees on a punitive scale, after he unsuccessfully challenged the release of former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s “State of Capture” report and, when that failed, sought a legal review of its constitutionality.
Madonsela’s 2016 report compelled Zuma to establish the commission of inquiry, something he challenged on the basis that the remedial action was not binding. He lost that argument in court and finally established the inquiry in early 2018.
The punitive costs order from 2018 that Zuma must personally pay costs stands. The costs order was upheld by the appeals court in 2020.
The EFF called the application “hopeless” and asked for an order that Zuma pay costs, which will add to his existing multimillion-rand bill.
“No record of the appeal has been filed and, in consequence thereof, no heads have been submitted either by the applicant himself and certainly not by the respondents,” said Kameel Premhid for the EFF.
“We collectively take the attitude that this application, as it stands before the court today, is fatally defective and that it should be struck from the roll with costs.”
Lawyers for the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac) and the Democratic Alliance supported the EFF’s position.
The Constitutional Court was Zuma’s last hope in challenging the order handed down in the North Gauteng High Court in December 2018. A previous challenge in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) failed in October 2020.