President Cyril Ramaphosa says he has accepted that the political fallout between himself and his predecessor, former president Jacob Zuma, will have to be resolved by the courts because that is what Zuma has chosen.
Ramaphosa was by yesterday expected to file an answering affidavit in which he would spell out why he believes the court should kick out Zuma adding him to the list of those who are to be charged in the former president’s private prosecution of NPA prosecutor Bill Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan.
Ramaphosa made an urgent application to court to interdict and then set aside the private prosecution, which charges him as “accessory after the fact” over the publication of information in a medical report that was filed in court.
In his application, Ramaphosa said the prosecution, launched the day before the ANC’s elective conference, had no reasonable prospect of success and was launched with an ulterior purpose: to prevent him from standing as a presidential candidate for the ANC because of the party’s step-aside rule.
JG Zuma Foundation spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi denied media reports that Zuma had missed the deadline, which he said was in fact today.
The application to have Ramaphosa removed from the list is expected to be heard on Thursday. The accessory after the fact case is expected to be heard on January 19.
Ramaphosa has resigned himself to the courts having the last word.
“Could it be solved in any other way? Perhaps. It has to be handled in a legal way as well as it came through in that way,” said Ramaphosa yesterday at a media briefing at the ANC’s Luthuli House headquarters in central Joburg.
“The courts are arbiters. They are able to take decisions, which we all say we will respect once that decision has been taken. There are ways, I guess, in which disputes can be resolved but right now this is the way things are and it is what it is, and we will deal with it as it is.”
Ramaphosa’s remarks potentially kill off reconciliation attempts by ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, who last week expressed a willingness to engage Zuma on his differences with his successor as ANC and state president.
“We are not going to leave comrade JZ as a former president and our leader alone. We know the sentiment he has expressed in the public domain, but we choose not to engage with him in the public domain. He is our leader.
“He came to conference as a delegate but to us he has a standing and we are going to engage with him at that level. We are going to do that with utmost humility,” Mbalula told the media last week.
Ramaphosa said he did not think that the spat between himself and Zuma would affect efforts to unify the party.
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