President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed the decision of the Johannesburg High Court to dismiss an application by former president Jacob Zuma to privately prosecute him.
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed the judgment of the High Court that threw out his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s private prosecution application.
He said he had maintained from the beginning that Zuma had no basis to lodge a private prosecution application against him.
He added that this was an abuse of the process by the former president.
The Johannesburg High Court found that the private prosecution against Ramaphosa was unlawful.
Zuma submitted his application late last year, on the eve of the ANC conference in Nasrec.
Ramaphosa lodged an application to oppose Zuma’s bid to have him privately prosecuted.
Zuma had argued that Ramaphosa had failed to take action against advocate Billy Downer SC for the alleged leak of his medical records. This related to a separate private prosecution that Zuma was pursuing in the Pietermaritzburg High Court in KwaZulu-Natal.
But Ramaphosa argued that he did not interfere in National Prosecuting Authority matters.
The private prosecution of Ramaphosa was heard in the High Court a few weeks ago.
Ramaphosa said he welcomed the judgment.
“The President has always maintained that Mr Zuma’s private prosecution constituted an abuse of court processes and that it was unlawful and unconstitutional,” said Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya.
The court found that the application was unlawful and unconstitutional.
