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Roundup: S. Africa's court dismisses Zuma's attempt to stop reinstatement of corruption charges

Xinhua, June 24, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Pretoria High Court on Friday dismissed President Jacob Zuma's application to appeal the court's earlier decision directing the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to reinstate over 700 corruption charges against him.

In April this year a full bench of the high court ruled that the NPA's 2009 decision to drop the corruption charges against Zuma was null and void and thus set it aside.

However, Zuma and the NPA lodged an application asking for leave to appeal the decision on the grounds that it allows the court to interfere with the prerogative of the NPA to independently decide whether to prosecute or not.

However, on Friday Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba dismissed that application.

"We seriously considered whether the appeal would have reasonable prospect for success and came to the conclusion that there are no merits in the arguments raised by the applicants.

"We have carefully considered our judgement and conclude that the appeal does not have reasonable prospects of success," Judge Ledwaba ruled.

The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which persuaded the court to review NPA's decision to drop the corruption charges against Zuma, welcomed the latest court decision.

DA's Federal Executive Chairman James Selfe said in a statement, "The full bench of the court determined that another court would not find differently in this regard and that, in fact the government respondents failed to advance any legitimate arguments to see leave to appeal granted.

"The 783 charges are in fact automatically reinstated and the NPA must give Zuma a date by which he is to appear in court. The prosecution against Zuma must proceed and he must have his day in court as he has always claimed he wanted."

However, experts say Zuma and the NPA can now petition the Supreme Court of Appeal directly in pursuit of their dismissed application.

In early 1999, Zuma was charged with fraud and corruption in contracts worth about 30 billion rand (about 1.9 billion U.S. dollars at current rate) in an arms procurement deal with European countries.

The NPA withdrew the charges, citing conspiracy against Zuma, weeks before the 2009 election in which Zuma won the presidency. Endit