South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma has been charged with corruption linked to a 1990s arms deal.<\/p>\n
After the 75-year-old’s 15-minute appearance at the High Court in Durban, the case was adjourned until 8 June.<\/p>\n
He faces 16 counts of corruption, racketeering, fraud and money laundering, which dogged his presidency and were reinstated in 2016.<\/p>\n
Mr Zuma, who was forced out of office in February, denies any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
His supporters descended on the city to rally for him, while his critics think court action is long overdue.<\/p>\n
After the hearing, Mr Zuma addressed the crowds who had come to stand alongside him at the court in his home province.<\/p>\n
“I have never seen it before where someone is charged with a crime, those charges are dropped and then years later those same charges are re-instated,” he said, speaking in Zulu. “This is a just a political conspiracy,”<\/p>\n
The arms deal took place in 1999, the year Mr Zuma moved from being a provincial minister to deputy president.<\/p>\n
He is accused of accepting 783 illegal payments.<\/p>\n
His financial adviser, Schabir Shaikh, was found guilty of trying to solicit bribes on his behalf from a French arms firm and was jailed in 2005.<\/p>\n
The case against Mr Zuma was dropped shortly before he ran for president in 2009.<\/p>\n
A woman representing French arms manufacturer Thales was also in the Durban courthouse on Friday, as the company faces corruption charges too.<\/p>\n
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South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma has been charged with corruption linked to a 1990s arms deal. After the 75-year-old’s 15-minute appearance at the High Court in Durban, the case was adjourned until 8 June. He faces 16 counts of corruption, racketeering, fraud and money laundering, which dogged his presidency and were reinstated in 2016. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3286,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions\/3286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}