Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

We know about the “two centres of power” – the government on the one hand and the ANC on the other – but there also seems to be a “parallel universe”, two separate realities coexisting next to one another, operating in the country.

That, at any rate, is what it felt like in Pietermaritzburg last week observing Jacob Zuma’s application in the High Court and the events outside.

On the one hand, there were the legal events in court and what they may signify. On the other, there was what was going on around the court and what was said by the tripartite alliance leaders.

Both realities co-existed, yet they often seemed to have little connection with one another. They seemed to be happening in parallel worlds that didn’t touch at any point, like a set of railway lines – or like two people talking at one another and not to one another.

Starting with the events outside, the leaders of the tripartite alliance swept into a dusty Pietermaritzburg on Monday, to make a statement that went something like this.

The prosecuting authorities and the courts can do and say what they like, but the ruling alliance believes in Jacob Zuma’s innocence; it feels he has been unfairly persecuted (if not prosecuted), and the alliance is going to see to it, come hell or high water, that he becomes the next SA president.

It was a well-organised show of support for the president of the ANC.

Supporters were bused in from Johannesburg, there was an overnight vigil, and ANC spokeswoman Jesse Duarte was present with her support staff and others from Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, working hard to ensure the much-maligned media interviewed alliance leaders as much as the usual talking heads.

And, of course, with the exception of Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC deputy president, all the bigwigs were there.

Motlanthe’s absence was notable because if Zuma does get knocked out of the race for the country’s presidency due to his legal problems, it is presumably Motlanthe who will become the front runner; and yet there are strong rumours of a growing rift between the two men.

The important people ranged from Baleka Mbete, the chairman of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, its secretary-general, replete with Trotskyite spectacles and goatee, Mathews Phosa, its treasurer-general, Lindiwe Sisulu, the minister of housing, Siphiwe “Gebuza” Nyanda, former chief of the SANDF, a full array of KwaZulu-Natal ANC officials, and Julius Malema of the youth league, to Zwelinzima Vavi of Cosatu and Blade Nzimande of the Communist Party.

At the end of each day of court proceedings (there were one-and-a-half in total), Zuma was walked out by his phalanx of bodyguards to the stage in the taxi rank outside the High Court.

An honour guard of uMkonto weSizwe (MK) veterans then stood to attention in front of the stage, saluted and fell out (militarily speaking) – once with so much vim and vigour that Debra Patta of e.tv almost got up-ended.

Once they had done this, and Vavi had breathed fire and brimstone about the attitude of the prosecution authorities, and Nzimande had done much the same, Zuma came to the centre stage to thank the crowd in the taxi rank for coming to support him and – at the end of the second day – to explain to them (as best he could) what had happened in court.

He delivered on both occasions a resounding version, replete with vigorous dancing, of uMshini wami (Bring me my machine gun), his trademark song, which brought the non-existent house down every time.

With the exception of Nzimande, who is not especially interested in matters sartorial, and Malema, who was, as it were, dressed for battle in a Zuma T-shirt, all the ANC officials and members were beautifully turned out, as though attending a wedding.

Vavi’s fine suit and tie, for example, looked as though they cost a great deal more than the average worker’s monthly salary, as did Mbete’s various get-ups.

There was a joke doing the rounds that “if you want to be in the next cabinet, you had better be seated in the front row at this trial”, and inside crowded Court Room A there was much jostling among the important people to win bum space on the front row of the hard public benches.

There was also much hugging and kissing exchanged by those in the front and other rows, behaviour that seems to be de rigueur for those who were involved in the struggle and still are.

But let’s turn now to the event that everyone had come to attend.

Unfortunately, it was not at all the big one about which everyone has been talking – Zuma’s trial on numerous charges of racketeering, corruption, fraud and tax evasion.

It was merely a preliminary skirmish.

Zuma had brought an application asking that the charges against him be declared invalid because he had not been afforded an opportunity to have the charges against him reviewed when he was charged in June 2005 and again in December last year.

According to Kemp J Kemp SC, Zuma’s counsel, both the Constitution and the NPA Act order “unambiguously” that Zuma was entitled to such a review and therefore the charges against him were unlawful.

But, according to Wim Trengove SC, the state’s lead prosecutor in this matter, this was not so – and in any case, Zuma’s application was effectively side-stepping the main issue by dealing with the decision to prosecute him as an “administrative” matter and not with whether he was innocent or guilty.

“(Zuma’s) attack does not say you cannot prosecute me because I am innocent, or that I am being unfairly tried,” said Trengove.

“It says that I should not be put on trial because the decision to prosecute me was unlawful. It is quite divorced from innocence or guilt.”

And it was, therefore, beside the point and the trial needed to continue, Trengove argued.

The difficulty, however, was that, besides the arguments being technical and descending at times to linguistic analysis – what do the Constitution and NPA Act actually mean? – the acoustics in Court Room A are poor, Kemp was clearly suffering from the after-effects of a cold or flu, and, despite being asked to speak up by Judge Chris Nicholson, he was mostly inaudible.

So there was a minimum of “juicy material” available, which meant there was little for the analysts and the main Zuma spokespeople to get their teeth into.

Besides, the real legal action was taking place behind the scenes and not in the courtroom. In May, counsel for both sides, as well as legal representatives for Thint, the French arms manufacturer which is Zuma’s co-accused, met Vuka Tshabalala, the judge-president of KwaZulu-Natal.

They agreed the main trial would be adjourned to December 8, at which a firm trial date would be set; the application for declaring the charges invalid would be heard on August 4 and 5; and an application for a permanent stay of prosecution, which Zuma indicated he would also be launching, would be filed in September.

Since the August and September applications were likely to be appealed, whichever way they went, the firm trial date, to be set on December 8, was likely to be late next year or early in 2010 – long after the May 2009 national elections.

But, apparently buoyed by the Constitutional Court’s criticism of Zuma’s strategy of pre-trial challenges, delivered 10 days ago when it turned down Zuma’s appeal against the validity of search-and-seizure warrants, and given that the state is “trial-ready”, state prosecutors Billy Downer SC and Anton Steynberg started pushing for a main trial date of April next year.

They argued behind the scenes that any unfinished business should be dealt with at the trial and before the trial judge, Judge Nicholson.

Zuma’s legal team was not happy with this suggestion.

Obviously Zuma wants to be president before he goes to trial. He might, for example, be able to introduce legislation, once he is president, which would make it illegal for a sitting president to stand trial.

And it is reliably understood that there are “resource” problems in the Zuma legal camp.

Both Kemp and Michael Hulley, Zuma’s attorney, have other commitments. They are not as free as state prosecutors to give 100% attention to the Zuma matter.

Nicholson was apparently unable to get the various sides to agree on anything. He accordingly ordered them to sort out their “squabble”.

He told them to set dates for the interchange of papers for the permanent stay application, which will be heard on November 25.

And, notably, he apparently did not have any objections to the state prosecutors pushing to set a date for the main trial, one that could be finalised on December 8.

Nicholson told all parties to be back in court on Friday to give him these dates. And he said he would give judgment on the present application on September 12.

To summarise. By Friday, Nicholson wants a timetable for the exchange of documents in the permanent stay-of-prosecution application, which he will hear on November 25. On September 12 he will rule on the application to have the charges declared invalid. And he also seems willing that a main trial date be set in preparation for December 8.

Unnoticed by many, Nicholson’s instructions seem to imply that he has made up his mind to push on with the main trial and to deal with all outstanding matters there.

How he would deal with the appeals there are likely to be against his September 12 judgment and the judgment in the application for a permanent stay, is not clear.

What is clear is that in the next few days, letters are likely to be flying thick and fast between the NPA and Zuma’s and Thint’s legal teams, and even between the legal teams and Nicholson, in which the Zuma and Thint teams are going to do their utmost to stay away from the first half of next year.

We return now to the outside of the High Court.

There, though Vavi, Nzimande, Malema and Duarte tried their best not to show disrespect to the courts and the rule of law, they could not help doing so.

Duarte said Zuma had been “maliciously persecuted” by the NPA over the years. Vavi said that “we” would not allow Zuma to go to any “kangaroo court” (it was not clear to what he was referring), and Nzimande said that justice wasn’t just about “a day in court” but about the “whole process”.

But that was just one line of a set of railway lines. The other line – the legal process – seems to be grinding ahead inexorably in its parallel world.