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Former President Jacob Zuma before the Zondo Commission.
Felix Dlangamandla, Netwerk24
- The General Council of the SA Bar Association, which is made up of 14 law firms, has criticized the Jacob Zuma Foundation for convicting lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.
- They said that while former President Jacob Zuma had the right to seek further legal recourse in Chief Justice Raymond ZondoThe challenge, the public insults were unjustified.
- They said Zuma had no “legitimate basis” for his criticism of Zondo and Ngcukaitobi.
The General Council of the South African Bar Association (GCB), an association of 14 defense societies across the country, criticized the Jacob Zuma Foundation for publicly condemning the presence of lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi on the Zondo commission last week.
Last week, the former president’s foundation said it was contesting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s dismissal of a request to disqualify Zuma and questioned Ngcukaitobi’s presence in the Zondo chambers during the proceedings on Thursday, November 19.
The GCB said the foundation’s statement implied that Ngcukaitobi, a member of the Johannesburg Defenders Society, was behaving erratically.
“No basis was provided for the claim that the presence of Ngcukaitobi SC in the company of Supreme Court Vice President Zondo was irregular and this claim constitutes an unwarranted personal attack challenging the ethics of both Supreme Court Vice President Zondo and Ngcukaitobi SC “.
The foundation added:
It is wrong and inappropriate to assume that judges and legal professionals are guilty of ethical wrongdoing and to publicly accuse them of wrongdoing, particularly when these claims are made by the foundation named after a former head of state and apparently with his blessing.
GCB said that Zuma himself publicly declared his intention to make Zondo’s decision not to recuse himself from the judicial review commission.
“That is his right. Since Mr. Zuma lives in a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law, there is no order for unrestricted, unfounded extracurial attacks against the commission or its staff, or the legal advisers who participate in its activities. procedures …. “
The GCB further criticized Zuma’s statements that the commission was an irregular process in disguise and that it was a comedy of errors. They further claimed that statements about Zondo acting without integrity, with “bad intentions” and “blind biases”, and making the orders of unidentified people “pulling the strings behind the scenes” were also unfounded.
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They also objected to the former president’s statement that Zondo was intimidating him and plotting criminal proceedings against Zuma.
They said that since the JG Zuma Foundation “has also not identified any other legitimate basis that could lead to these conclusions, the GCB condemned them as a dangerous, unjustified and cynical attack on the rule of law.”
These comments are especially worthy of censure in circumstances in which the statement itself indicates that Mr. Zuma is prepared to ‘face jail’ and, therefore, evidently acknowledges that his conduct in failing to comply with the summons and the instructions of the commission exposes him to prosecution and imprisonment.
GCB said:
It is not for a former president to make unfounded claims of an infringement of the rule of law and at the same time blatantly scoff at the very principle he claims to uphold.
