ConCourt refuses Zuma’s urgent appeal of high court interdict halting Ramaphosa’s private prosecution

The Constitutional Court has, in a three-line order, refused a bid by former president Jacob Zuma to appeal against the high court interim interdict that halted his private prosecution of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The apex court said on Thursday it had considered the application for a direct appeal and “concluded no case has been made for a direct appeal”.

The former president was seeking to appeal against an interim interdict that had, in any event, been taken over by events. A final interdict was granted by the Johannesburg high court last month, putting an end to the prosecution. The court found it was “for an ulterior purpose in what amounts to an abuse of this court’s process”.

The interim interdict had been granted in January and meant Ramaphosa did not have to stand in the dock as a criminal accused. When Zuma approached the apex court, he had specifically asked the highest court to hear and decide his appeal before May 26, the date the criminal court was due to reconvene, with his attorney saying “in respect of future dates of appearance, this application is of crucial importance”.

The former president had charged Ramaphosa with being an “accessory after the fact” in relation to a separate private prosecution he had pursued against prosecutor Billy Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan after Downer provided Maughan with a medical report about Zuma, later filed in court.

Zuma’s charge against the two was that this breached the National Prosecuting Authority Act. Ramaphosa’s alleged crime was that when Zuma wrote to the president asking him to investigate, Ramaphosa failed to act. The high court in Pietermaritzburg set aside the Downer-Maughan prosecution, calling it an abuse of process.

In motivating for the highest court to give a decision before May 26, his attorney Walter Niedinger said Zuma’s application represented “easily one of the saddest chapters in the history of injustice in SA” and dealt with “some of the most fundamental issues which flow into the DNA of SA, past, present and future”.

News24 reported on Wednesday that the private prosecutions of Downer, Maughan and Ramaphosa were at least partially funded by Gauteng diamond dealer Louis Liebenberg, through Niedinger, who is also Liebenberg’s attorney. Though the highest court refused Zuma leave to appeal, it decided not to award costs against him.

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