Zondo Commission secretary Itumeleng Mosala says in an affidavit before the Constitutional Court – seeking an order to compel former president Jacob Zuma to appear before the commission next year – that Zuma’s conduct amounted to ‘actively attacking the legitimacy and credibility of the commission, its chairperson and its work’.
The commission filed an urgent application to the Constitutional Court on Thursday, asking it to order Zuma to comply with a new summons to appear and give evidence in January and February next year.
Mosala said in the affidavit: ‘This application has arisen because, though Mr Zuma attended the commission’s proceedings on the 16th, 17th and in the morning of 19 November 2020, he left the proceedings without the chairperson’s permission on 19 November 2020 … in defiance of the summons issued to him.’
According to TimesLive, Mosala also asked the highest court to order Zuma to answer any questions put to him, ‘subject to the privilege against self-incrimination, and may not rely on the right to remain silent’.
The application asks the Constitutional Court to declare that Zuma is constitutionally obliged to appear before the Commission, and to comply with any summons it has issued.
Mosala says in the affidavit that ‘I believe that only this court can grant effective and adequate relief … in the grave situation that has arisen’, and that an urgent intervention was required to ‘authoritatively countermand the negative impact’ of attacks by Zuma on the commission, its chairman and its work, ‘and protect the integrity and legitimacy of the commission’.
According to TimesLive, Mosala referred to the statement made by the Jacob Zuma Foundation after his walkout from the hearing, which said, ‘President Zuma assures us that he would rather face jail time than allow himself to be bullied by an irregular, manipulated and unlawful process.’
Mosala said: ‘Mr Zuma is the founder and patron of the foundation. The foundation speaks in Mr Zuma’s name. Mr Zuma has not publicly countermanded the Jacob Zuma Foundation’s statement … and so must be taken to have fully associated himself with the statements.’
The result was that he was now ‘actively attacking the legitimacy and credibility of the commission’, said Mosala.
[Picture: eNCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcPxzX8THaA, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89078890]