Zuma Spy Tapes Finally Handed Over to the DA


By Oliver Ngwenya    05-Sep-2014 05:55 UTC+02:00
This might be a time of reckoning for the President after the Spy Tapes were handed over to the DA on Thursday. Image: SABC.

This might be a time of reckoning for the President after the spy tapes were handed over to the DA on Thursday. Image: SABC.

The long awaited so called Zuma spy tapes have finally been placed in the hands of the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. The audio recordings on the tapes were handed to the leader of the DA, Hellen Zille, on Thursday afternoon following the order by the Supreme Court of Appeal at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.

This, according to the DA leader, is a culmination of six court cases and the spending of more than ten million rand in over five years. They have won several of these court cases but they were yet to be given the notorious spy tapes. The spy tapes are said to be audio recordings of conversations that show that there was a political conspiracy against Jacob Zuma that would have prevented his ascendancy to the presidency of the country.

The now president of the republic, Zuma was being investigated for fraud and corruption charges by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) as well as the now disbanded Scorpions. The spy tapes are said to have conversations between the then NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka and the then boss of the Scorpions, Leornard McCarthy that contributed to the decision that was taken by the NPA to drop investigation of the charges. The Democratic Alliance took the matter to court to get the tapes and to find out what it was in the tapes that had led to the charges being dropped. They won several court cases to be given the tapes but to no avail. In the latest, Zuma’s legal team had argued that if the DA got their hands on the spy tapes they would use them politically against Zuma.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the NPA had five working days to hand over the tapes to the DA. On Thursday afternoon, the tapes were handed over even though it was after an hour’s delay. The delay was as a result of the request by the North Gauteng High Court deputy judge president Aubrey Ledwaba to view the judgment that was in favour of the DA. He meant to assure himself that all the requirements had been complied with. When the tapes were finally handed over, Zille said that they would be independently forensically verified and then the contents would be examined to ascertain that there was reason enough to drop charges against Jacob Zuma. In his response, however, the President, through his spokesman, Mac Maharaj, said he was happy with the process so far.


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