Zuma in final bid to block evidence

SOUTH AFRICA’S ruling party leader Jacob Zuma launched a final bid in the country’s highest court yesterday to block evidence seen as crucial to his pending corruption trial.

Zuma, 65, made a low-key arrival for the first of two days of arguments in the Johannesburg-based constitutional court.

He took his place behind lawyers and a mountain of documents to be considered in the application by his lawyer Michael Hulley and Thint, the South African subsidiary of French arms company Thales.

The parties have filed simultaneous applications for permission to appeal against the evidence recovered in search and seizure operations carried out by prosecutors in 2001 and 2005.

Zuma, the ruling African National Congress’s (ANC) candidate for the state presidency when incumbent Thabo Mbeki steps down next year, goes on trial in August on 16 counts of fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering.

Thint will be co-accused alongside Zuma, and both want documents seized by the elite Scorpions investigating unit — soon to be scrapped at the insistence of the ANC — to be declared inadmissible.

Mbeki fired Zuma as deputy state president in 2005 after his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik was handed a 15-year prison sentence for canvassing bribes for Zuma from Thint, in return for which Zuma was to exercise his political clout in an arms deal.

Zuma and the others are challenging a judgment by the supreme court last November, which upheld the validity of search warrants used for raids on properties of Zuma, Hulley and Thint in 2005.

Zuma, 65, argues the search of his homes and offices had violated his constitutional rights to privacy, dignity and a fair trial, while the raid on Hulley’s offices contravened attorney-client privilege.

Zuma denies any wrongdoing. His corruption case was thrown out of court in September 2006, but later reinstituted.