with the tapings that Zuma has, can he not be charged with extortion?

1) I would like to hear your run down on this what the NPA is legally obligied to do.

a) dropping the case on what legal grounds?
b) if conspiracy should the NPA charge the conspiracist?
c) Inlight of Zuma having evidence of tapes and phone tappings can the NPA charge Zuma with Extortion?
d) Infact is this not a breach of security bordering on treason between Mbeki and Zuma?

2) what can Zuma be charged with now, as a private citizen who seems to have presidential tapes and in possession of nation security information? How is this possable?
a) How dangerous is it for a private citizen to have access to such information?
b) How long has Zuma had this new evidence of tapes and phone tappings

3) What is south africa’s law on phone tappings and presidential security?
a) when can a presidential room or office be phone tapped?
b) what is the procedure if this is leaked into the public domain?

Zuma’s legal team has telephone taps conversations between former president Thabo Mbeki and former Scorpions head Leonard

what is wrong with this picture?

how does a private citizen gain access to state intelligence information and secret tapings?

surely this is a breach of National security? How legal is this?

How legal is it for the Intelligence agency to be phone tapping a president by law this can only be judicially authorised and founded on a legitimate crime-fighting motive.

How dangerous is it for a “private citizen” to gain access to this?

what are the legal implications of this?

I contend that the arms adeal and the JZ’s case are sideshows as the National Democratic Revolution(NDR) falters.

From a political strat on the side of the Alliance(ANC/Cosatu/SACP), it is clear what the agenda should be and who dictates the terms. Eastern Cape had a phenomenal growth in ANC membership after the ANC NGC in July 2005 to Polokwane. Or should I say from Tshwane to Polokwane. There were 70 653 as at NGC and 153 164 as at Polokwane and only 73% of the branches in ‘potential good standing’ implying there were also ghost branches.

Going to Polokwane 1 in 4 ANC members were from the EC.

“Of all the areas in the country, the largest swing towards the ANC occurred in the King Sabata Dalindyebo municipality, where the ANC scored 36% in 1999 and 59% in 2004. Moreover, these gains were consolidated during the 2006 where the Eastern Cape rec orded the highest turnout of registered voters (56%) and the strongest growth in ANC votes (compared with 2000) of any province.” ANC Organisational Report, Polokwane ‘07

The point being that a decision was reached after the NGC to swell the ranks of the ANC with workers and penned in the July 2007 SACP Congress resolutions, that there must be the ‘hegemony of the working class’.

The SACP has a paper ‘The SACP and State Power’ wherein it clearly spells out that it will intervene in all centers of power. From State Owned Enties to Municipalities the SACP must assume a leading role. It is also categorically stated in the party statutes that your loyalty is to the Party first, period.

The Party thinks it can march to Socialism and yet the social and political situation is no ripe. This is where I think they missed the boat completely. They should have taken heed of what Cde Joe Slavo terms ‘careerists’ in his seminal pamphlet “The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution” 1988.

“A failure to understand the class content of the national struggle and the national content of the class struggle in existing conditions can hold back the advance of both the democratic and socialist transformations which we seek.” JS

“The SACP’s 12th Congress ‘07, quite deliberately sought to influence and impact upon the critical ANC 52nd National Conference – not in a narrow electoral contest manner, but, above all, in seeking to re-open democratic space within the ANC and our alliance, and in seeking to impact positively on policy resolutions. Indeed, in the Central Committee’s analysis these objectives were broadly achieved. The 1996 class project’s political and ideological supremacy within the ANC has been (at least provisionally) broken. Many important positive resolutions were adopted at Polokwane, and there is generally a much improved policy-making engagement within the Alliance, including at the May 2008 Alliance Summit, alliance ETC processes, and the important Health and Education campaign.” SACP and State Power.

Here is a sample of the resolutions;

1 NOTING That the question of state power is the central question of any revolution
2.That state power is located in diverse sites, including the executive, the legislatures, the judiciary, security forces, the broad public sector, state owned enterprises, and other public institutions
3.That the strategic Medium Term Vision (MTV) of the SACP is to secure working class hegemony in the State in its diversity and in all other sites of power
4.That electoral politics are an important but not an exclusive terrain for the contesting of state power
5.Working class power in the state is related to working class power in all other sites, including the imperative of developing organs of popular power, active forms of participatory democracy and social mobilisation
6.That structures of the SACP and our cadres have confronted many problems with the way in which the Alliance has often functioned, particularly with regard to policy making, the lack of joint programmes on the ground, deployments and electoral list processes.”

Last pasting from JS

“Even where the socialist transformation is directly on the agenda, the role of the private sector cannot be dismissed. Leaving aside the lunatic excesses of Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, many hard lessons in this area have been learnt by some of the established socialist states and, more recently, by African parties dedicated to a socialist advance. The transition period to socialism may well demand a maintenance of selective parts of the private sector. A mechanical and generalised elimination of this sector for the sake of satisfying sloganised orthodoxy, has often served to undermine the faith of the working people in the capacity of socialism to ‘deliver the goods’.

Instructive!

The war of brothers between these guilty men, which has already compromised judicial process in South Africa in the most serious way, now threatens to turn South Africa into a zone of ethnic, class and sheer anarchic mayhem that could make Kenya look like a kiddies’ playpen. The greatest responsibility for saving South Africa from this fate now lies with ANC leaders with sober heads who were not compromised by the arms deal. Their first responsibility is to find out the truth, as best they can. Their second is to tell it. They must place this entire revolting and shameful mess into the hands of the courts, where it belongs, and they must defend the integrity of the legal system against all comers without discrimination. Only the courts can place the full truth of the arms deal out of the realm of myth and counter-myth, accusation and counter accusation. A political solution can only follow a legal solution. There is no other way in which the ANC can clean its hands, or South Africa be saved from bloodshed. Things fall apart….

Jacob Zuma suggests that he is innocent because there are others who have done worse or the same as him and therefore should not be charged, since they are not charged. I have no doubt in my mind that there are people who have taken tens of millions while he only made a mere four million. Now, this does not make him any less culpable only less shrewd.

He has made several applications to Mauritius not to have evidence needed to prove his guilt handed to the NPA. He does not say that the evidence is fabricated, but merely that it is political case against him. This suggests that the evidence is real. What also seems to be forgotten is that the NPA and Zuma were busy in a court battle to obtain the evidence; therefore, the NPA was not ready for trial. It was no fault of theirs.

Apart from the possibility of going to prison (which would take a very long time, with appeals and the like), there is another reason why the ANC would be reluctant to have a trial. This is exactly that the truth would come out (again) – there would be this steady stream of facts about payments made, and favours granted that would be hard to gainsay. Imagine how this could affect the next Municipal elections…

If we assume (for discussion’s sake) that the NPA has indeed been pressurised into agreeing to drop the charges, then all of the attention that the issue has enjoyed might well make it rather difficult for them to go through with it. It is all very well to have threats and / or promises, but if there is the certainty that the truth will be revealed, then those at the top may ultimately baulk, and prefer to let the law take its course.

Once there is hard information about any (potential) threats or inducements to drop the charges, then the smelly stuff will really hit the rotating wind-device. Anyone out there in the press with a handle on cell-phone records…

Also, the Shaik parole could be very instructive. I don’t want to jump the gun too much, but it is beginning to look like that was a VERY amateurish job, carried out VERY brazenly. Who is to say that the Zuma submission to the NPA, and any decision flowing from that is not equally ham-handed and brazen?

The fact seems to be that the NPA needs a figleaf. It seems to have been told by the ruling class that Zuma must not be charged or he will spill the beans (and not on Mbeki, but on the rich and powerful). But it can’t do that without an excuse. The secret documentation (which turns out to be the same stale hash as before) provides an excuse.

Or, putting it bluntly, we are doomed not only because of the corruption of the ANC, but also because of the corruption of our national political and economic establishment, which promotes the corruption of the ruling party.