The subject of these articles was the murder in Lusaka, Zambia, in November 1989 of a leading commander in Umkhonto weSizwe, Thami Zulu (real name, Muziwakhe Ngwenya, known as "TZ"), which took place while Mr Zuma - then a member of the Politburo of the South African Communist Party - was head of counter-intelligence in the ANC security department, its feared Department of Intelligence and Security (DIS). An ANC commission of inquiry, headed by then Advocate Albie Sachs, found in March 1990 that Thami Zulu had in fact been poisoned while in close confinement due to illness, but in a complete breach with the spirit of law the same commission failed - or rather, refused - to inquire who might have killed him. This failure of jurisprudence suggested to me a serious danger for the rule of law in South Africa, under government by the ANC.
South Africa now faces a probable breach of the Constitution, with the likely election as President of Mr Zuma while facing criminal charges relating to corruption. One of Mr Zuma's most zealous speechifiers, the president of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, has argued that this trial can be set aside, and the Constitution and the law be overturned, simply by an electoral majority voting for the ANC list in the general election. If this were to take place, it would in my submission be as grave an abuse of law as the report of the Sachs Commission in 1990 represented a scandal of jurisprudence.
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