Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s tweets incited violence, says witness

Videos and photographs of the July 2021 unrest, which were tweeted by former president Jacob Zuma’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla accompanied by the words “we see you” with fist emojis and exclamation marks, were indicative that she was egging people on.

This was the evidence of lawyer and former Forensics for Justice employee Sarah-Jane Trent before Durban high court judge Mbuzeni Mathenjwa in the trial of the MK Party MP who is facing charges of terrorism and inciting violence.

However, under cross examination Trent started to falter and had to concede at times that some of the pictures and videos did not actually reflect any violence, though that was how she perceived it given the unfolding events.

State advocate Yuri Gangai took Trent, who laid the complaint with the Hawks, through the series of posts on Zuma-Sambudla’s Twitter feed, many of them on July 9 2021 at the height of the unrest that left 350 people dead in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

The court then viewed some of the video clips which depicted, what the state alleges, to be cars burning, looting and general violence, proof that together with her words, Zuma-Sambudla had incited violence.

One showed a machine gun and two other firearms being fired into the air by unknown people, with bullets from the machine gun spewing out rapidly.

“When I look at that video it is violent,” Trent said, while conceding that she did not know the isiZulu song played in the background.

Another clip, to which Zuma-Sambudla had written, “Mooi Plaza, we see you,” depicted a Spar truck and a vehicle carrier in flames.

Another showed road blockages and burning sugarcane in Richards Bay, with the words “Cdres in Richards Bay we see you” and asking, who does the burnt sugar cane belong to.

Another depicted amabutho, a traditionally attired crowd outside a Spar store in Mtubatuba running and singing, which Trent said she perceived to be “violent”, given the context of the “violent times”.

These posts were liked and shared hundreds, if not thousands of times, by her 124,000 followers.

The violence flared after Jacob Zuma was incarcerated for contempt of court after he defied a Constitutional Court ruling that he appear before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

Many of Zuma-Sambudla’s tweets referenced this with the hashtag #freeJacobZuma.

Trent said she was “horrified” when the tweets were brought to her attention and she decided to follow Zuma-Sambudla on Twitter. She then downloaded the tweets and submitted her complaint.

One of the “stills” posted was a pamphlet calling for the shutdown of KZN roads, factories, shops and the government until Zuma was free, safe and alive.

I am not saying she was the cause. But she is a leader in this country… thousands of people look up to her, It was extreme. It had to stop.

—  Sarah-Jane Trent, former Forensics for Justice employee

Zuma-Sambudla had written, “I agree with this.”

“If this isn’t incitement then I don’t know what is,” Trent said.

She said this post had followed a video of machine guns being fired and posts of burning cars in the streets.

She said given Zuma-Sambudla’s influence, she believed the posts “would do a lot of damage, which they did”.

“I am not saying she was the cause. But she is a leader in this country… thousands of people look up to her,” Trent said.

“It was extreme. It had to stop.”

However, under cross examination by Advocate Dali Mpofu, Trent found herself on the back foot and conceded that some of the videos, including the one of the amabutho outside the Spar in Mtubatuba, did not depict violence.

“I see weapons, I can’t be blamed for not knowing that tradition,” she said, when Mpofu explained that the group were carrying traditional weapons symbolising their culture, and they had walked past the shop and were not looting it.

She agreed that it was “not a crime to do that”.

On the issue of the tweeted pamphlet, in which his client had commented, “We don’t want to fight with anyone,” Mpofu said she had actually been “inciting peace”.

Regarding her frequent calls for her father to be released from jail, he said should it be necessary. Jacob Zuma himself would testify about the impact of his incarceration “without a trial”.

Earlier in cross examination, Mpofu started laying the ground for another leg of the defence — that the charges are politically motivated.

He referred to the fact that at the time she laid the complaint, Trent had been working for Forensics for Justice founder Paul O’Sullivan who, Trent said, had alerted her to Zuma-Sambudla’s social media messages.

O’Sullivan, Mpofu said, was known to be close to President Cyril Ramaphosa and had been named by Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi as interfering in the criminal justice system.

Trent, however, denied that she had been influenced at all by any politics.

However, she was hard pressed to explain why she had mentioned Zuma-Sambudla’s alleged business ties to the Guptas in her complaint to the Hawks, eventually conceding that it was “not relevant in the context of this case”.

Cross examination will continue on Wednesday.