By: Jacob Zuma
As it is now common knowledge that on the 7th of July 2021, I handed myself to the Estcourt Correctional Centre to serve a term of 15 months imprisonment as ordered by the majority decision of 7 Judges of the Constitutional Court in which 2 other Judges held a different view.
On 7 October 2022, I served the last day of that sentence of 1 year 3 months prison sentence without a trial. However, I remain uncertain about whether I am really free, given that there is still a pending court decision in a case brought by white right-wing organizations that I be sent back to prison.
Therefore, whilst I am relieved about the ending of my prison sentence, I still remain exposed to the injustice visited upon me by the justice system of this country.
When we fought to liberate this country from the unjust laws of apartheid, we did not know those who supported and defended apartheid would infiltrate the justice system to continue the agenda of their colonial ancestors against the leaders of the people.
People have in recent years been blinded by the fact that we now have democratically elected black governments. They are blinded from seeing that our elected governments are still expected to serve the commercial interests of colonial powers ahead of those of the people who elect them.
I believe I am one of those leaders who has been punished for serving my people ahead of the commercial interest of the colonial powers.
As a freedom fighter, I am determined to live my remaining years of life without any fear of oppression from the very institutions that I dedicated my life to establish, so that everyone living in our country has a guaranteed freedom.
It is important to remember that the whole society was mobilized against me and for the first time in the country’s history, some people came out in their numbers to march saying Zuma Must go.
Books were written, misleading documentaries were made and comrades were turned into enemies under the illusion of some new idea called State Capture.
My imprisonment came as part of a long campaign aimed at removing me as president and punishing me for having not been a darling of the commercial interests that seek to profit at the expense of our poor people.
The Constitutional Court does not have such overriding powers to willy-nilly send people to jail. That in my view is a travesty of justice and it must be exposed and be rectified by the Justice System.
I will continue to speak out against a system that seeks to suppress and undermine my rights and the rights of many who are targets of the wrong system.
I know I am correct in my resolve to fight such injustices and the abuse of power. If I should be imprisoned for these beliefs, so be it.
As I expressly indicated before my incarceration without a trial, I have been arrested by the apartheid regime. I said then, I don’t fear prison. Indeed, I said it to the apartheid regime then. I again said it to the Constitutional Court.
I would like to repeat that even if I am arrested wrongly by our democratic state, I don’t fear prison. I will never fear any arrest even if it’s done by my democratic laws twisted by those who have been given the powers to send people to jail.
But I must say that it remains a shock that a democratic state can arrest and imprison its own citizen without a trial.
This is something to be frowned upon by all of us peace-loving citizens and mainly the patriots.
But of course, being myself, this action made me to remember the old apartheid days where people were arrested and kept in custody without a trial. But apartheid had to cover this because they knew it was illegal and wrong.
They had to cover it by quoting it as “detention without trial”.
They called it a “90 days detention”.
I was again one of those who served a 90-day detention in Pretoria without a trial in 1963.
The irony is that during my 90-day detention I was arrested for fighting for my rights.
In the democratic South Africa, I was imprisoned without a trial for defending my rights which is enshrined in the Constitution.
What a coincidence!!!!!!
The Learned Judges said that whilst it is a right enshrined in the constitution for all citizens not to answer questions, but they said to me, that right does not apply to Zuma.
Does this confirm a claim that in this country there are “Zuma Laws”?
Having reached the end of my unlawful incarceration of 1 year 3 months by the Constitutional Court without a trial, I decided that the circumstances of my conviction and direct imprisonment should give us a chance to reflect.
I, therefore, reflected on how our constitutional institutions, established to protect us from the abuse of state power can and will become themselves institutions that will and can be used to victimize us for daring to challenge the abuse of state power in our system of government.
My imprisonment started with Justice Zondo setting out an unprecedented legal process against me, in terms of which, I became his target of abuse.
From the start of the State Capture Commission, it became clear to me that Justice Zondo as chair of the commission was not interested in establishing the truth, but was himself involved in building up the narrative of the State Capture.
In other words, Justice Zondo was not a neutral judge leading a fact-finding commission but was running a process of writing a report that would establish the guilt of all those who had been accused of state capture because of their known association to me.
In my view, Justice Zondo failed the test of his oath of office.
The fact that he is now sitting at the helm of our judiciary, should be a matter of great concern not just to me but to all other freedom-loving compatriots.
The State Capture Commission was never about uncovering the truth about the commercial interests that have been influencing government policies and decisions ever since the establishment of our democracy in 1994.
It had no interest on how some former leaders and their families /spouses have amassed billions in wealth from being given shares for free in big companies.
It was not interesting in understanding why and how so many leaders of the liberation movement became super wealthy overnight through the few wealthy families who control the economy of this country.
Instead, the Commission was only interested in pursuing targeted individuals that had been pronounced guilty of State Capture by the media. Certain leaders were declared saints in the media and the State Capture Commission was not interested in anything that implicated them.
Another of the agendas of the Commission which has emerged from the final report was to take away the ANC’s ability to implement party policies in government by suggesting that our system of cadre deployment was unconstitutional.
I find this strange that such would be said because every party that wins an election appoints its own members to key leadership positions in the state. The cabinet appointed by the president is normally from members of his own party. That is cadre deployment. It happens everywhere in the world.
It is clear to me that the so-called Zondo Commission was established as a platform to eliminate the progressive and transformative elements of our country by Constitutional means.
Instead, we see more and more of how our constitution is being manipulated to advance colonial interests at the expense of the ambitions of the democracy and the need for an equal society.
I indicated to Justice Zondo that the Commission which had been unlawfully established was itself, being used by an unelected leadership of the country to remove the true leaders of our liberation and entrench a new political elite, that would conform and be controlled by colonial economic interests.
I told Justice Zondo that those who supported the Zondo Commission, irrespective of its unlawful establishment, did not care about the Constitution and would use an unlawful device as the Zondo Commission to advance their interests in hijacking our Constitution to represent their greedy interests.
I traced for Justice Zondo where the plan was to replace the progressive group of the liberation movement with a new political elite, that would maintain the colonial and apartheid infrastructure of economic control as to where the ownership was coming from.
I referred to two intelligence reports that made it clear that there is a carefully chosen special layer of South African leaders, whose role is to ensure that the resources of our country and its global influence on the continent is reorganized to serve this global agenda in which the interests of our people do not matter.
I knew that the Commission would be used as a diversion to channel the people’s zeal for progressive change to the mere condemnation of people like me and many others.
In terms of the Law, Section 6 (1) of the Commissions Act of 1947, says that anyone charged with contempt of court shall be guilty of an offence and liable to conviction to a fine not exceeding sixty pounds or imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months, or both such fine and imprisonment.
In terms of this law, the Constitutional Court failed to adhere to what the Law of the country dictates. They gave a sentence far bigger than what is stipulated in the Law, which in my case I was convicted to 1 year 3 months.
This conviction is unlawful and therefore I contend that this does need some clarity with regard to some judges who err in their judgement. As a citizen of this country, I ask: what do we do when the Judges of the apex court make mistakes in their judgement, that unfairly disadvantages the accused person? The fact is that the highest court in the land violated the Law.
What is the remedy to this? This is a serious matter that must not be left unattended to. We need to ensure that Judges are not reduced to Politicians.
What I said then, is happening as we speak now. Our key institutions are now intended to serve this global agenda.
As we speak there are moves to privatize strategic state assets and surrender key functions of the state to international global interests.
As a developmental state, we had the key objective of bringing electricity to every village and every home through Eskom. Eskom is now being surrendered to international commercial interests for them to profit from our people’s need for electricity.
Those doing this, use the State Capture as an excuse to divert the public’s attention from what is really happening. In 2015, my government ended load shedding until I left office at the start of 2018. This load shedding was stopped for 3 years in the time of professionals such as Mr. Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko.
Load shedding started immediately after certain agreements were concluded with Independent Power Producers and has never stopped since then. Why does the current leadership fail to get a handle of the issues at Eskom?
It is public knowledge that a few of these power producers had invested millions into the campaign of one of the candidates at the 2017 Nasrec Conference.
During my tenure as president, we had intended to harness nuclear power to develop the energy mix. Civil society organizations were mobilized by those wanting to sell electricity to the public which is generated by the free sun of Africa. We now live in a country where it is normal to have the power switched off two or three times a day.
SAA is gone, Eskom is in shambles and we accept this incompetence. What will now follow is our ports, rail, and water.
Our coal-powered power stations are being neglected and being set up for collapse while all our coal gets shipped to the very same countries who are giving us loans to close our power stations while they use our coal to generate electricity for themselves.
I wish to state it clearly, as I did in the past, that my later refusal to appear before the Zondo Commission was not about avoiding having to account for things that happened during my presidency. It was as a result of the clear bias against me by Zondo as he seemed to have departed from being neutral on the matter. Zondo was himself continuously making statements that suggested that he had already concluded that I was guilty of everything that I had been accused of.
In that climate, I still believe that I was right to have insisted that my evidence be heard by somebody who was neutral and had not found me guilty in advance.
When I asked Justice Zondo to recuse himself, he used his powers as a judge to be a Judge and a witness in a matter affecting him. He made his own statement as evidence and then ruled that he was right and I was wrong. What an absurd judgement.
In denying having had any past relationship with me, he interestingly did not state what he has recently stated in the interview with the JSC to become Chief Justice.
His statement at the commission did not state that we would often hold private meetings. Some of which would have been meetings requested by him.
In his JSC interviews this year, Justice Zondo said that he could not remember the things we would discuss in those private meetings and nobody asked why.
Maybe he did not remember because some of those things are things that he chooses to forget and does not want to be reminded about what we spoke about.
Perhaps it becomes difficult once you reach the highest judicial office in the land, it becomes difficult to remember meetings, perhaps selectively.
One of the reasons why my sentence was 1 year 3 months was because I dared to challenge our judges. I have said it in the past, and I will say it again now if we do not stand up and hold members of the judiciary accountable, we will be creating a judicial dictatorship in this country.
People speak out against people who raise criticism against some judges as if the judiciary is a superior arm of the state. The three arms of the state are equal and perhaps this is starting to escape the minds of some judges.
Some of our judges loath being criticized and I know that I have given many of them the opportunity to justify their judicial bias against me by expressing my views. I do believe that my views should be protected under section 16 of the Constitution.
Our judiciary must reflect on its role with regard to defending our democratic constitution.
It must reflect on its true role in promoting the radical changes in our Constitution which are required to ensure the transition from the old oppressive order and establish a new socio-economic and political infrastructure consonant with our historic mission and goals of our movement.
Our judiciary must reflect on its role in promoting the radical changes of our constitution, which are required to ensure the transition from the old oppressive order and establish a new socio-economic and political infrastructure consonant with our historic mission and objectives of our democratic South Africa.
After my evidence at the Zondo Commission, if he was acting without any agenda, he would have sought to establish at least two things.
First, given that I had disclosed to him my knowledge and access to the two reports of foreign intelligence agencies on how a new political elite would control the future of South Africa and the direction of our constitutional development.
He would have taken serious note of my presentation.
This would have enabled him to realise among other things if his commission was indeed established to undermine the Constitution as I contend it was. This is a view I continue to hold.
Indeed, this was a contribution I made at the commission of inquiry, as I attended as an invited guest.
The second issue which I believed was easier for a judge at his level to verify, is the issue of the allegation that the commission of inquiry had been established unconstitutionally.
Justice Zondo should know the constitutional requirements for the establishment of a commission of inquiry. This too was ignored, and I now know why he ignored a serious charge to the unlawfulness of his appointment as the Chair of the Commission of Inquiry.
A credible examination of the constitutionality of the Commission would have ended the grand political plot of those who invested everything in forcing its unlawful establishment so as to provide the opportunity to entrench the political influence of this special group of persons who would serve the interests of their colonial masters and mistresses.
Justice Zondo, acting in accordance with his oath of office, would have refused to take part in a commission of inquiry established outside the requirements of the Constitution.
He would have refused to chair a commission whose main goal was not truth-finding, for Zondo did not find the truth, but an act of destabilization in order to advance the political interests that would strangle the progressive and transformative goals of our Constitution.
Rather than employ the clear law governing commissions of inquiry, Justice
Zondo solely decided to subvert it by using or abusing the power of the Constitutional Court to have me convicted and sentenced to prison for 1 year three months without a trial.
My crime was only my alleged refusal to cooperate with the Commission, but in truth, it was to sideline my participation by creating oppressive conditions for whatever my participation in the commission would bring.
Justice Zondo created unlawful and oppressive conditions for my participation which included a presentation in the commission to tell him that he was presiding over an unlawfully established commission of inquiry.
Its purpose, I knew was to undermine our Constitution and hijack our institutions to serve the greedy local and global interests in our country.
For example, the terms of Reference of the commission of inquiry were changed, altered, and narrowed down to focus on the targeted individuals they wanted obliterated and victimised. It’s all out there for everyone to see.
What is corrupt within the ANC, are some individual members who are in the main, from the top structures of our movement. It is absolutely important to always make this distinction.
There is no ordinary member of the ANC who has been accused of any wrongdoing. On the contrary, some of those who have been accused, charged, and killed other comrades and those who use money in exchange for positions are found in the main leadership levels.
We cannot, therefore, blame the ANC for all the alleged corruption in the ANC.
These selfish people are no longer shy to defy the Constitution and erode the potency of any institutions with the mandate to hold them to account.
I warned and will continue to do so that these infiltrators and fake revolutionaries would be rewarded for committing clear crimes and exonerated by an unrelenting wave of media propaganda for sabotaging the historic mission of our organisation.
We are witnesses of this today. We have seen the 30 pieces of silver with our own eyes.
My medical situation remains a concern to me and requires constant monitoring. I have however resolved that I will live the remaining years of my life, confidently and courageously.
Our country is not completely free and we dare not fall into the false belief that our Constitution is stronger in the hands of the agents of global commercial interests. They will render the Constitution a piece of meaningless paper if we let them.
There is no known precedence of the apartheid courts having endorsed the illegal establishment of a Commission of Inquiry. But in this democracy, we’ve allowed the erosion of our hard-won gains.
So, we need to be ready to make the sacrifices necessary to ensure that we leave a legacy of a legal system that protects the progressive gains of our liberation.
I wish to pay special tribute and gratitude to all South Africans who have shown me unwavering support and love. To my legal team for their tireless efforts and to medical teams for the very professional, selfless, and patriotic service to me – thank you. Today they publicly detest any sign of improvement in my health, which was the very intention of my medical parole. They are obviously disappointed that my life was indeed saved.
I am resolute that we need to mobilize against the leaders who have sold our constitution to their greedy friends. We need to ensure that we speak out when crimes are committed by the highest political authorities.
It is interesting to observe the silence against the many allegations of criminality against the current president. All the so-called civil society organizations who parade as defenders of the rule of law are nowhere to be seen in demanding accountability from him.
He has suspended the head of a chapter 9 institution while she is investigating him and there is total silence. Instead, the courts are defending the lack of accountability.
There is complete silence by the media about the Phala Phala allegations. This was not the case when allegations were made about the security upgrades at my home in Nkandla; by the way: this is standard practice as prescribed in the Government handbook for all sitting and former Presidents.
I often wonder what the situation would have been if I was the one accused of having millions of dollars hidden under mattresses. I wonder what would have happened if that was an allegation out of Nkandla.
Let us not beat about the bush about the neglect of constitutional duty that comes with abusing the office of the President to conduct private business.
I am assuming that what President Ramaphosa has said about the many dollars under his bed or furniture is true – that he conducts private businesses while serving as President of our country.
That on its own is unconstitutional and those who applaud him for doing so commit the most disgusting transgression. Conducting private business while holding the high office of the President is nothing but corruption, which is inconsistent with the nature of that office and the Constitution.
It is inconsistent with the oath of office taken by the President and those who defend such deeds, both in the executive and the legislature, commit treason against our constitution. Suffice to say that your president has committed treason. No President should conduct private business while in office. Our country’s problems are too big for a president who is busy hustling on the side.
To add insult to injury the Western Cape High Court has found that the President went further and suspended the Public Protector for the sole purpose of covering up his Phala Phala corruption: your president is corrupt. Yet the busy-bodies and self-appointed anti-corruption crusaders and NGOs are dead silent
Finally, I wish once again to thank all those people who stuck their necks out in defense of democracy when the wolves were hovering around my body. Some compatriots were arrested outside the Estcourt prison for giving me support.
That includes the hundreds of South Africans who paid the supreme price in the process.
The media has sought to drive a wedge between us by capitalising on the fact that I did not refer to those who tragically lost their lives when I was briefly thanking those who have consistently supported me during my court appearances.
We must not be fooled by such crocodile tears. The brutal truth is that they do not care about black lives. What kind of people are we who can lose almost 400 lives over one judicial mistake and continue with life as if nothing has happened?
What have we become as a nation? Would the same silence be the case if only 40 or 4 non-black people had lost their lives in vain?
It is most unfortunate that the media has sought to drive a wedge between us by capitalising on the fact that I did not refer to those who tragically lost their lives when I was briefly thanking those who have consistently supported me during my court appearances.
Indeed, we must wake up to the reality that black life is cheap in South Africa. My family and I pass our deepest condolences to those who lost their lives during that unnecessary and avoidable tragedy of that fateful day in July 2021.
It should never have happened. It must never happen again. Violence and oppression only beget violent resistance, as history has taught us time and time again.
We need to collect the names of all those compatriots who lost their lives and properly commemorate their spirits. Please join me in that effort. I hope my foundation is listening to this.
I have spoken about how the state power given to Justice Zondo to chair a commission of inquiry into allegations of corruption and fraudulent activities in state institutions was abused and turned into a tool to justify the intense political victimization and persecution of a group of people who served under my Presidency.
It is clear that Justice Zondo completely misapprehended the constitutional role of his commission of inquiry, which he transformed into an agency of dictatorship.
Once the dictatorship receives endorsement from the highest judicial officer, it is necessary for judges to stand firm and resist this trend.
There should be a wholesale rejection of what Zondo stands for and represents in our Constitution.
Our country cannot stand with a dictatorship endorsed by the judicial system. Judges must guard against this trend – of aligning their judicial power with that of political institutions. Judges must not endorse oppressive state tendencies under the guise of being players in the system of government and the regulation of government power.
The pathetic Zondo Commission vindicated the correctness of my decision not to offer it my further participation. With an alarming sense of false bravado, it behaved as though it is above the law and my constitutional rights are a hindrance to its political agenda.
Of course, Justice Zondo should have recused himself from sitting in my judgment when he alone knows the nature of our past relationship, discussions, and dealings.
In this regard, I take my hat off to Justice Koen for showing leadership and integrity earlier this week. On his own accord, he realised that due to his past comments which were favourable to Billy Downer he cannot be the person to determine whether Downer should now even be playing any role in my criminal trial while he is Accused Number 1 in the private prosecution for a serious offence. That step by Justice Koen shows that there is still hope for our judiciary. Justice Zondo should sit back and learn how a judge who has no agenda should conduct himself.
With alarming zeal, the 2 billion Rand Commission’s real political agenda was laid bare as it stripped itself of the fake attributes of fairness and impartiality that it had previously claimed to possess.
It was clear that when the Evidence Leader, Mr. Pretorious was reading out to the public my charge sheet, he was in fact dishonestly using the Commission platform to ferment further political antipathy towards me.
The NPA of Mr. Ngcuka – surrendered me to the court of public opinion whose small section stands ready to embrace and reward him for his despicable conduct.
History will absolve me and no amount of political propaganda will stop the wheels of justice from turning towards the goals of a society in which all of us are protected by the law and the Constitution.
I stand ready to lawfully engage in a battle for the soul of our constitutional democracy against the Commission.
They will not choose the platform for that battle but every ounce of energy that I still possess, will be dedicated towards ensuring that no South African ever becomes a victim of orchestrated victimization at the hands of some individuals within state institutions parading as lawful purveyors of our constitutional goals.
At this point, we stand at a crossroads between salvation and oblivion, the direction we take must not be in the hands of greedy and blood-thirsty enemies of our freedom.
We need to guard against those who seek to sell our sovereignty and independence to foreign interests.
We need to guard against those who are collapsing every state enterprise with the aim of selling it to foreign interests.
We must guard against those who have failed to build any infrastructure for our people but have only been concerned with plunging the country into further debt, by taking sovereign loans with expensive interest imposed to us as a country.
We must guard against those who will wear the colours of the ANC to fool our people into voting for them while they stand to advance the agendas of other evil forces.
We must guard against those who seek to divide us by sponsoring factionalism in the ANC that is intended to permanently fracture the ANC.
The choices we as citizens make in the next two years will determine our destiny. In tackling that task, we need to spare no effort in building the unity of the oppressed poor black masses, especially Africans.
As we do all these important things as mentioned above, we have a responsibility to unite all our people, both black and white South Africans.
This responsibility is ultimately our final goal to make South Africa a real united rainbow nation.
Let me take my last few minutes to thank my legal team.
Let me take this time to thank my legal team for their dedication under the leadership of Adv Mpofu SC and Adv Masuku SC and the entire legal team. Let me thank my Foundation for the good work they continue to do.
I thank you for your attendance.
