Zuma breaks silence on corruption case
If the court decides against a permanent stay of prosecution, Zuma will have run out of options. A decision in his favour will end a legal battle that’s been 15 years in the making
Jacob Zuma challenged the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to put him on trial for corruption 15 years ago, the former president says, arguing that the state’s "undue delay" in prosecuting him was — and is — part of a strategy to paint him as a criminal and neutralise him politically. "I virtually challenged and invited the NPA to charge me and resolve issues of my guilt once and for all in a trial," Zuma states in a nearly 300-page affidavit filed at the KwaZulu-Natal high court last week. "I sought no favours. I wanted the matter finalised there and then [during June-August 2003], one way or the other." In his application for the recently revived corruption prosecution against him to be dropped permanently, Zuma is adamant that, when he said "I want my day in court", it was in relation to being tried alongside his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik in 2003, or just after Shaik himself was convicted of corruption in 2005. Zuma’s application also, perhaps for the first time,...
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