Eighteen months after NPA boss Shaun Abrahams told former president Jacob Zuma’s estranged wife Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma that she was officially a suspect in an alleged plot to kill her husband, the prosecuting authority still has no solid case against her.
But it has emerged that the National Prosecuting Authority has sent the docket back to the Hawks for further investigation.
The head of the NPA’s Priority Crimes Litigation Unit, Torie Pretorius, last month issued the investigating officer with a fresh directive to investigate the matter further.
Pretorius was assigned by Abrahams in August last year to handle the case against Ntuli-Zuma. He had given the Hawks until the end of last month to complete their investigation, failing which he would drop the case against Ntuli-Zuma, who has through her lawyers denied any involvement in the alleged plot to kill Zuma.
Sophisticated intelligence-gathering vehicles and guards fitted with go-pro cameras were just some of the security measures employed by universities to quell violent campus protests — and it came at an eye-watering price.
The Cape Peninsula University of Technology last year signed a R5-million contract with a company to provide “riot security services” for 37 days – despite staff demanding their removal from campus. And this was still small change compared to what was spent on additional security the year before.
But after having student buses and campus buildings torched and cars stoned, CPUT insists it was necessary, and that the presence of the additional security on campus made a huge difference in bringing the chaos under control.
“It became clear that traditional security measures would not quell the violence,” CPUT spokesperson Lauren Kansley told Times Select.
On Sunday evening, Jeff Radebe told eNCA that there is no deal with Russia to build nuclear power stations in South Africa. I imagine that moments later, wild celebrations broke out all over the Kremlin, with Vladimir Putin sending a case of caviar to the head office of Rosatom with a handwritten note wishing staff a safe flight to Waterkloof.
After all, this is the same Jeff Radebe who told us that the Seriti Commission wasn’t a whitewash of the Arms Deal. The same Jeff Radebe who explained that the renovations at Nkandla were totes legit. The same Jeff Radebe who told Jacob Zuma it was a great idea to make Menzi Simelane the head of the National Prosecuting Authority – an appointment described by the Supreme Court of Appeal as “irrational” and “unconstitutional”.
Yes, Jeff has a said a lot of things over the years, like in 2014 when he told us that Zuma would complete his second term as president, or like in 2015 when he stood up to defend the Gangster-in-Chief against a vote of no confidence, citing the R1-trillion the Zuma administration had spent on infrastructure. OK, yes, quite a lot of that was spent on firepools and Gupta trains that didn’t fit on our rails and dairy farms in the Free State and keeping the Saxonwold armoured personal carrier oiled, but it’s all infrastructure, right?
At the end of his passionate defence – few politicians have sung as sweetly for their supper as our Jeff – he told the opposition to calm down about the prospect of removing Zuma.
“At the end of this debate, after much noise from the opposition, as sure as the sun will rise from the east, President Zuma will be the president,” he said.
