PIETERMARITZBURG – Former president Jacob Zuma has been denied leave to appeal the dismissal of his special plea to remove lead prosecutor advocate Billy Downer from his corruption trial.
Pietermaritzburg high court judge Piet Koen on Wednesday ruled the trial must proceed, as agreed to by all parties, on April 11, this year.
Koen handed down a summary of his findings, in which he dismissed all of Zuma’s eight “category of issues” he had raised in an attempt to persuade the judge to grant him leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
In dismissing every one of them, he described some as “factually incorrect, unfounded and opportunistic”.
Zuma’s attempt to belatedly seek a special entry of an irregularity or illegality in the trial, Koen said none, had been identified with the required clarity.
“In as far as possible that they can be discerned, they are, with respect, frivolous, absurd and an abuse of the court process,” Zuma said.
Zuma’s lawyers argued two weeks ago that their client would be severely prejudiced by the application of a procedural rule, raised by the state, that an appeal could only follow if he were convicted and sentenced by the trial court.
It was, advocate Dali Mpofu pleaded, a constitutional breach that added to the defence’s reservations about fair trial rights, and here he might have been hinting that the matter was not only likely to reach the SCA in Bloemfontein but ultimately the Constitutional Court in Braamfontein.
