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By ANA Reporter 
1 hour ago
Cape Town – Supreme Court Vice President Raymond Zondo testified on Monday that he had never been friends with Jacob Zuma when the commission of inquiry into the state’s capture heard a legal request from the former president for his disqualification.
“That’s not accurate,” Zondo said, listing the times in the past two and a half decades that the couple’s paths have crossed.
Zondo said he paid his respects when one of Zuma’s wives died “18 or 20 years ago,” but Zuma had never attended any of his family’s funerals or more mundane events like birthday celebrations.
At times, with a pained expression, he added that in 1996, a year before he became a judge, he had met with Zuma because he was representing a client as an attorney who wanted to file a lawsuit against him.
However, Zondo said, he never applied because he was later appointed to the court. He added that as a judge, Zuma had never before requested his recusal from justice in any of the matters involving the former head of state.
Zuma has run for the impeachment of Zondo as head of the eponymous commission investigating a network of rent-seeking scandals that developed mainly during his presidency. This came after Zondo, exasperated by Zuma’s refusal to testify before the commission, summoned him to do so.
Following Zondo’s opening statement Monday morning, Zuma’s defense attorney, Muzi Sikhakhane, said he was not accusing Zondo of being biased or lacking integrity.
Instead, he said he needed to criticize the judge’s vice president because, through his comments in commission sessions at times, he contributed to a perception that has gained public traction that Zuma is the politician responsible for the corruption and disorder that it hits South Africa.
The former president, who was present at the hearing, was reasonably justified in being “afraid” of appearing on a forum that had reinforced the perception that he belonged to prison, Sikhakhane continued.
“He may have created an environment that reasonably imposes on his mind that this forum is an extension of the narrative about him that everything that went wrong in South Africa is attributable to him,” he said.
Zondo called for a tea break before Sikhakhane was about to list the comments that he claimed fostered this fear and perception.
He had previously said that presidents were expected to remain impassive even when hearing heartbreaking testimony about the rape of a young child.
Sikhakhane said that the fact that two courts had prohibited Zuma from fulfilling his normal presidential duty, as established in the Constitution, to appoint the head of a commission of inquiry in the case of the state’s investigative capture of Zondo, had already created the ground for the former president’s fears.
African News Agency (ANA)
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