Enough evidence in tapes to get Zuma back to court, says Zille

South Africa's main opposition leader Helen Zille said yesterday that secret phone recordings her party acquired through the courts revealed "sufficient evidence" to legally challenge the decision to withdraw corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma.

After five years and six court cases the Democratic Alliance (DA) party was last week granted access to the so-called “spy tapes” by the nation’s supreme court of appeal, which ruled the national prosecuting authority (NPA) must hand over the recordings.

When the NPA dropped hundreds of corruption charges against Mr Zuma days before his inauguration as South African president in 2009 it said it did so because of alleged evidence in the tapes that revealed collusion between senior police officers and NPA officials.

Prosecutorial process

It was said the evidence showed that those individuals recorded were trying to manipulate the prosecutorial process Mr Zuma was involved before the ANC elective conference in 2007, where he was appointed the party’s new president.

At the time acting NPA boss Mokotedi Mpshe said the recorded conversations showed there was a political conspiracy against Mr Zuma and as a result the case against him could not continue. However, the NPA refused to divulge the contents of the tapes.

Since then the DA has been trying legally to access the information so it can use it as part of its legal bid to reinstate the corruption charges against Mr Zuma, but the NPA has challenged the party’s application all the way through the court system.

The charges against the president allegedly relate to bribery and fraud involving his former business adviser Schabir Shaik, who was found guilty of soliciting money on behalf of Mr Zuma and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2005.

Last Thursday the NPA gave Ms Zille the tapes. She said a forensic expert would analyse their contents to ascertain whether they indeed showed evidence of a political conspiracy against Mr Zuma.

Yesterday in her party’s newsletter she wrote: “I have read the transcripts of the tapes handed to us by the NPA last Thursday. They constitute recordings of 36 conversations over five months.

“Without revealing the contents, I am satisfied that the ‘spy tapes’ provide sufficient evidence to continue our review application of the decision, by the then acting national director of public prosecutions, Mokotedi Mpshe, to withdraw the charges against President Zuma.”

The presidency welcomed the decision by the appeals court to release the tapes but has said nothing else on the matter.