NPANC rotten to the core

For years we have been scrupulous about not allowing anyone to use this newspaper to say, without qualification, that Jacob Zuma is corrupt.

You could get away with “allegedly corrupt”, or ask why he was so keen to avoid facing charges of fraud, corruption, racketeering and money laundering, including 783 instances of bribery.

After all, we had to protect ourselves from another defamation case. Going to court can be expensive but that shouldn’t worry a man who has unlimited access to other people’s money.

After Monday’s gutless display by National Prosecuting Authority boss Mokotedi Mpshe, all the pussyfooting around Zuma will stop.

You are free to say he is corrupt. I shall too.

Zuma is corrupt, there you are.

If he wants to take us to court he is welcome. Many Zuma supporters, including some who should know better, think he has been found not guilty.

ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa is an attorney, but his knowledge of the law is weak. Carried away by Monday’s excitement he declared the party had always said Zuma was innocent, and “today it was the NPA who said it”.

“We say to the NPA: at last you have seen the light, you have finally seen the truth.”

The truth is Mpshe did not say Zuma was innocent.

The nation heard him proclaim: “It is not an acquittal.”

So if, despite the best efforts of Helen Zille’s team, Zuma is not charged and convicted of corruption, that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.

It does mean those who say he is corrupt may be compelled to prove the truth of their statement. And that, dear reader, is one way in which all the evidence against Zuma could finally be aired in open court.

There is, for starters, a famous KPMG forensic report that could be subpoenaed. And who knows what else could be turned up by clever lawyers trawling through eight years of work by top investigators. You, as a taxpayer, have helped fund the attempted prosecution of Zuma.

It’s cost about R100 million, so far.

If Zuma was the only corrupt person in this cesspool it would have been cleared long ago. But now we know the NPA, past and present, is as bent as the ANC leadership, past and present. Rotten, rotten to the core.