The latest request to oust President Zuma is being made by political activist and lawyer Paul Hoffman in an open letter to the secretary general of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe. In the letter “Criminal activities on the part of President Jacob Zuma during May/June 2015” Hoffman, writing as a director of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa (IFAISA), says Zuma had become “conflicted and compromised”.
The Mail & Guardian quotes from the letter saying Hoffman’s stance is that Zuma has become “intolerable” to South Africa’s constitutional order by – in the space of a few days – being first guilty of corrupt activity and secondly defeating the ends of justice by acting in disregard of a court order in relation to the secretive departure of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from South Africa. .
In the first instance Hoffman was referring to an agreement reached between Zuma and the then head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Mxolisi Nxasana, which led to him agreeing to resign in return for a reported R17.3-million.
Hoffman warns in the letter that if Zuma was not recalled by the ANC “on or before 10 July 2015 and otherwise dealt with appropriately by the ANC… we will be left with no alternative but to lay criminal charges against him with the SAPS ourselves”.
Mantashe told the Mail & Guardian “if they want to lay a criminal charge they can go ahead and do it. It is their decision and it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It is their business, they can do what they want to do.”
