'Oust Zuma, or else ...'

MPs who back President Jacob Zuma in the forthcoming vote of no confidence could face legal heat.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) will seek advice on what form of litigation it could institute against MPs who support the president in the vote, which is likely to take place at the end of August.

Outa chairman Wayne Duvenage made the announcement yesterday in Cape Town, where the civil society group unveiled a dossier it claims contains enough evidence to ensure the president's removal from office.

"We need to contemplate all avenues and one of them is litigation," said Duvenage.

"The other is looking at parliament and asking the court to make the judgments that are required to compel parliament to exercise its duty."

Duvenage said he did not want the secret ballot National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete is under pressure to approve. An open ballot would "give us a lot more exposure to who those transgressors are".

But legal experts said MPs could not face any form of court action over the way they voted on the motion of no confidence.

Paul Hoffman, director at the Institute for Accountability, said the no-confidence vote was a "popularity contest" in which the president's conduct was not voted on.

"There is nothing that can be done either in civil or criminal law if a person makes a political judgment that it is okay to support a crooked president in a no-confidence motion, because it is a political decision," said Hoffman.

"The same does not apply in a vote on removal from office, which is a disciplinary procedure."

Outa handed its 176-page dossier, No Room To Hide: A President Caught in the Act, to parliament yesterday.

In the document - which attempts to summarise all the evidence of state capture from reports, media exposés, affidavits and the #GuptaEmails - Outa says Zuma mismanaged his cabinet in a way that has had a detrimental effect on the country and the economy, used or manipulated state resources or appointments to avoid prosecution on at least 783 criminal charges, lied or misled parliament and the nation, and abused his position to enrich himself, his family and his cronies.

The document is made up of chapters outlining ties between the Gupta and Zuma families, the alleged Zuma-Gupta plundering of public resources and the circumstances around the removal of cabinet ministers.

The report said South Africans, through their elected representatives in the National Assembly, were entitled to hold the president to his oath of office and the obligations imposed on him and his cabinet by the constitution.