Court orders South Africa’s leader to pay legal costs

By Hassan Isilow

PRETORIA

A high court in South Africa has ordered President Jacob Zuma to personally pay legal costs for his failed attempt to stop the release of a report into influence peddling in his government.

Zuma launched an urgent application last October, a day before an anti-corruption watchdog was to release the ‘State Capture report’ which showed Zuma was being unduly influenced by a wealthy family.

The president claimed he had not been given an opportunity by the watchdog to respond to some of the allegations in its report.

However, Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo said Zuma had been aware of the compilation of the report six months before it was published but did nothing to explain his position.

Zuma cancelled an application interdicting the release of the report as the court was about to hear it.

This prompted several opposition lawyers to ask the court to compel Zuma pay costs for abandoning the application.

“The president is personally ordered to pay the costs,” Judge Dunstan Mlambo said in a unanimous judgment on Wednesday.

He said if the president was not held personally responsible, then the legal costs would be a burden on the taxpayer.

He said the president’s overall conduct left him with no option but to find that he must be held personally liable for all the costs that were occasioned from Oct. 14, 2016.

The legal costs for all opposition lawyers could run into millions of rand. Local media quoted the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) saying their legal costs are 1.5 million rand (approximately $110,000).

Zuma, 75, who is completing his second term in office, has been tainted by several corruption scandals.