Open letter to Jacob Zuma on his candidacy for President

Dear Mr Zuma

Before your legal team makes representations to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) tomorrow, I request that you put your ambitions aside and act in the interests of the country and the Constitution by publicly stepping down as the ANC's presidential candidate.

Rather than creating a "bad precedent", as you told your supporters outside the Pietermaritzburg High Court earlier this month, the withdrawal of your candidacy would set an excellent precedent.

It would demonstrate to your fellow South Africans - the people whom you aspire to lead - that real leaders place national interests ahead of personal interests. It would send a clear and powerful message that political leaders must be held to account; that their conduct must be beyond reproach, and their probity must be beyond suspicion.

Above all, it would match in deed your recently-stated commitment to upholding the Constitution and the values that underpin it. If you were to be elected President by the National Assembly without having been exonerated of the charges against you in a court of law that would seriously undermine the Constitution. In fact, I have been reliably informed by senior members of the bar that your election could be challenged in the Constitutional Court. That is because your presidency would create a conflict of interest between your constitutional role as Head of State and your status as an accused in a matter that has been brought against you by the state itself.

Until such time as you are cleared in a court of law, it is impossible for you to serve your country as its President with any hope of being able to discharge the obligations and responsibilities that all of our presidents have to undertake in terms of the Constitution.

To use a soccer analogy: If you were to become President while still Accused number 1, you would find yourself simultaneously in the same position as the Chiefs' striker (President) and the Pirates' goalkeeper (Accused).

The rights of an accused to take on the might of the state in defending himself are incompatible with the obligations of the Head of State to run the country properly, accountably and in a manner responsive to the needs of the people. It is quite intolerable for our state to proceed criminally against its own Head, a Head who is well placed to fund or not fund the prosecution, to influence decisions regarding the state's stance in appeals and processes, personnel and procedures in the case. As Head of State you appoint the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP). This is akin to the Pirates' goalkeeper nominating a Pirates' player to take the last shot for the Chiefs in a penalty shoot out in the cup final.

Although your candidacy may well be an own goal for the ANC, you must withdraw it now for the sake of our constitutional order.

The NPA currently has 18 charges pending against you, many of which were laid for the first time at the end of December 2007. If you do not stand trial on these charges a pall of suspicion will hang over every move you make and every decision you take in the future.

You may have noticed that in mature democracies, unresolved allegations of impropriety send politicians into early, and sometimes temporary, retirement. Yet, you have chosen to pursue your political career (and presidential ambitions), despite the fact that you have not publicly dealt with the serious and varied allegations the prosecution thinks it can prove against you in a court of law.

Your trial must go ahead. Once the criminal proceedings are finally over, you can re-enter the world of politics, unless any sentence imposed precludes you from doing so. However, until then, you are trying to play for both sides at the same time. You can't. Nobody can. It's illegal and irrational. Any vote in Parliament in favour of your election as President is open to legal challenge on the basis that it would be invalid for want of consistency with the Constitution.

It is also politically and morally indefensible to persist in your candidacy under current circumstances. Presidents have to work in the political world of perceptions as well as the legal world of facts and rules. And so you must do the right thing and step aside until your innocence is proven in a court of law.

It is not feasible for you to run the country from the dock in Pietermaritzburg. So, in the interests of our country and its Constitution, which you now say you revere as the supreme law, stand back from politics until the criminal case is properly finalised.

Yours sincerely

Helen Zille
Leader of the Democratic Alliance

This article by Helen Zille was first published in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, February 19 2009

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