Zuma asks court to dismiss journalist Karyn Maughan’s urgent application

Former president Jacob Zuma says the purpose of the application by News24 journalist Karyn Maughan in which she seeks to stop the private prosecution by Zuma is designed to delay her inevitable prosecution.

Zuma asked the court to strike Maughan’s application off the roll for lack of urgency.

In September, Zuma summonsed Maughan and Billy Downer, the lead prosecutor in his corruption and fraud trial, to appear in the Pietermaritzburg high court on October 10‚ where he intends prosecuting them in relation to allegations that Downer leaked documents to Maughan.

This led to Maughan launching her urgent application to set aside the summons.

Maughan said the summons against her was a “gross abuse of court process”‚ obtained for ulterior purposes of intimidating and harassing her and preventing her from doing her job and reporting on his arms deal trial.

Zuma filed an answering affidavit on Monday in which he said Maughan did not dispute that she received documents from Downer containing his medical information.

Zuma said he wanted to raise preliminary points on the basis of which her application stands to be dismissed or struck off the roll.

These included lack of urgency‚ the court’s lack of jurisdiction to hear her application and prematurity.

Zuma said Maughan’s application represents one of the “grossest and a stillborn attempt” to prevent the inevitable.

There was no need to set her matter down on the urgent court roll and illogically setting it down on the day he and his legal team will be attending to the criminal proceedings.

“If the idea was to prevent criminal proceedings from taking place‚ the application would have been set down on a date before October 10 2022.”

Zuma said if the intention was to synchronise the application so as to coincide with the criminal proceedings‚ it should have been brought in the criminal proceedings and under the same case number and not separately in the civil court.

“The belated attempt to request the acting judge president to ‘consolidate’ the civil proceedings with the criminal proceedings is irregular and senseless.”

The alleged urgency was self-created and not supported in law or logic.

There was also no reason advanced in the papers why Maughan will not obtain sufficient redress at a hearing in due course or why she must jump the queue of other opposed applications.

Zuma said the civil court lacks the jurisdiction to hear some of the issues raised in her application.

The ground that the private prosecutor lacks the title to prosecute should be brought as a special plea at the stage of tendering a plea‚ not in the civil court but before the criminal court hearing the charge‚ and at any time after the start of the trial.

“The blatant purpose of the present interlocutory litigation is clearly to delay the inevitable criminal proceedings.”

Zuma said other grounds — that the institution of criminal proceedings are vexatious or constitute an abuse of process — should be referred for consideration by the criminal trial court after hearing all the evidence at the end of the trial‚ in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act.

Zuma said he has a right to prosecute Maughan.

“In doing so‚ I do not seek to stop her from reporting about my trial. I do not even wish for balanced reporting from her because she is incapable of that. I wish to prevent her from committing a crime with the NPA [National Prosecuting Authority] officials to my personal prejudice and to the prejudice of the prosecution as well as the administration [of] justice as a whole.”

Zuma said Maughan was not entitled to disclose to any person his medical condition obtained unlawfully from the NPA and without his permission.

TimesLIVE