A South African judge said yesterday he was considering passing judgment next month on ruling party leader Jacob Zuma’s bid to have a graft case against him dismissed.
The case could stop Zuma becoming president in an election next year that he is almost certain to win.
“I am presently minded to give judgment in about a month’s time, on the 12th of September,” judge Chris Nicholson said, adding that he would discuss this with the prosecution and the defense.
The case is the biggest obstacle to the African National Congress (ANC) leader succeeding South African President Thabo Mbeki next year.
Zuma denies the charges of corruption, fraud, money-laundering and racketeering, but says he will step down if convicted.
A long trial might mean Zuma’s case overlaps with a general election next year, which he would almost certainly win, and the combination could increase political instability in Africa’s biggest economy.
Zuma’s strong links with trade unions worry some investors, who see Mbeki’s policies as more pro-business, but they are also concerned about continuing uncertainty.
Inside the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday, lawyers argued the legal technicalities of dropping the charges against Zuma.
Outside, a large crowd of Zuma supporters went wild as the so-called “People’s President” appeared on a trailer and belted out an anti-apartheid song which has become his personal anthem, Bring Me My Machine Gun.
“We are here in our thousands to say ‘hands off our president, hands off,’” said Zwelinzima Vavi, a trade union leader and one of Zuma’s most outspoken loyalists.
The former apartheid-era guerrilla leader fell out with Mbeki in 2005, when Mbeki fired him as the country’s deputy president after Zuma’s financial adviser was sentenced to 15 years in jail for trying to elicit bribes from a French company.
Charges were thrown out in 2006 on a technicality. But within days of Zuma’s ANC victory in December, the National Prosecuting Authority said it had new evidence and filed racketeering, corruption, money laundering and fraud charges.
Prosecutors say Zuma accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Thint, formerly Thomson CSF, to use his influence to stop probes into government arms deal contracts.
But Zuma supporters say he is the victim of a political conspiracy.
“We think the charges should be dropped,” ANC spokesman Jessie Duarte told reporters. “We think it is persecution, not prosecution.”
Zuma’s lawyer argued on Monday that the case should be thrown out because prosecutors failed to consult him in 2005 after they reversed a 2003 decision not to charge him. The prosecution dismissed this as “beside the point.”
Senior ANC officials questioned the integrity of the nation’s top judges after the Constitutional Court upheld a ruling last Thursday that the 2005 police seizure of incriminating documents from Zuma’s home and office was legal.
There have also been vague warnings about changing the constitution to prevent a sitting president from facing criminal charges.
Critics say this bodes badly for the future of a country which has enjoyed a vibrant democracy and fiercely independent judiciary since the end of apartheid in 1994.
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