Pretoria - Former president Jacob Zuma has arrived at the Pietermaritzburg High Court, in KwaZulu-Natal, for the beginning of the private prosecution of criminally accused veteran journalist Karyn Maughan and State prosecutor, advocate Billy Downer, SC.
Last year, the former president opened a criminal case against Downer, alleging that the State’s lead prosecutor in his long-running corruption trial had unlawfully leaked his medical records, including a doctor’s note, to the journalist.
Zuma insists that the actions of Downer and Maughan were in contravention of the National Prosecuting Authority Act, but the NPA declined to prosecute.
Spokesperson for the JGZ Foundation, Mzwanele Manyi, confirmed that Zuma, who has been declared a “free man” after his parole on the contempt conviction expired last week, would physically attend the court case.
“Zuma, a free man, will be in the Pietermaritzburg High Court tomorrow morning (Monday) for the private prosecution of accused number 1, Downer, and accused number 2, Maughan, who both violated s41(6) of the NPA Act,” Manyi wrote on Twitter.
Manyi said the NPA Act s41(6) did not make exceptions for Maughan, or any journalist, for that matter.
“The law forbids any person. Why does Maughan think she’s not any person? It’s not like the objection is based on an honest journalist reporting from publicly available court documents, no.
“Here we are dealing with an unlawful private deal between Downer and Maughan where unfiled and uncommissioned information from the NPA was shared.
“Why is it complicated to understand that the law was broken? That medical record is aggravating circumstances but a secondary issue,” Manyi said.
Late last month, Maughan filed an urgent application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, asking the court to set aside the private prosecution, but she did not succeed.
Maughan, in the court papers, said Zuma “has no substantial and peculiar interest in the issue of the trial since he has personally suffered no injury as a consequence of the offence he alleges I have committed”.
“The summons is a gross abuse of the court process. It has been obtained against me for the ulterior purpose of intimidating and harassing me and preventing me from freely doing my job as a journalist reporting on Zuma’s criminal trial,” Maughan said in the court papers.
IOL
Now watch: