FORMER president Jacob Zuma will prosecute Advocate Billy Downer privately after the state declined to do so.
Speaking to reporters in Joburg on Sunday, 10 April, Jacob Zuma Foundation spokesman Mzwanele Manyi said the case was criminal and would make Downer ineligible to prosecute Zuma.
Manyi said the move came after the NPA declined to prosecute Downer for leaking Zuma’s medical records to a journalist, despite Downer admitting to it in an affidavit.
Manyi said the NPA took statements from an advocate in Cape Town and a journalist in Joburg, who allegedly received the reports.
“In the middle of all this, on 5 April, a decision was taken by the NPA that it would not prosecute Downer. In all the confusion, it looked like the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing,” he said.
Manyi also revealed that Zuma’s lawyers would apply for a postponement to the start of his trial on Monday, 11 April, as the team was awaiting a confirmation certificate from the Supreme Court of Appeal on its decision to dismiss Zuma’s application to appeal the Pietermaritzburg High Court decision not to recuse Downer from his corruption case.
“We, the foundation, hold the view that what is wrong with the justice system is not the system itself but other people operating within the system.
“They tweak and turn things and give all kinds of spurious interpretations of the law. So now when we do this private prosecution, the law is going to be given its proper meaning so that justice is not only done, but seen to be done,” he said.
