Zuma and Thales back in court in another bid to halt arms deal trial

Former president Jacob Zuma and French arms company Thales were back in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court on Thursday, making yet another attempt to have corruption charges against them dropped. Judge Nkosinathi Chili is hearing their application for leave to appeal his June ruling, which dismissed their bid for an acquittal in the decades-long arms deal corruption case and effectively cleared the way for the long-delayed trial to proceed. Zuma and Thales have argued for a permanent stay of prosecution, claiming that repeated delays have violated their right to a fair trial.

However, in June, Judge Chili found that the court had no authority to withdraw the charges and was not convinced that the accused would suffer irreparable prejudice. “It would be incompetent for the court to grant the relief sought,” he ruled at the time, adding that the power to halt prosecutions lies solely with the state. The ruling means that Zuma still faces corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering charges linked to the 1999 Strategic Defence Procurement Package — widely known as the arms deal.

He is accused of accepting bribes from Thales while serving as deputy president, with payments allegedly channelled through his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, who was convicted of corruption and fraud in 2005. Zuma joined Thales’ application in April, arguing that the state’s case against him is “symbiotically conjoined” with that of the company. Thales, meanwhile, claims its defence has been severely compromised by the deaths of two key witnesses, former company directors Pierre Moynot and Alain Thétard, who were based in South Africa at the time of the deal.

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Moynot died in January 2021 and Thétard in Germany in September 2022. The company only obtained formal confirmation of their deaths in late 2021 and 2024 respectively. However, Judge Chili pointed out that Thales had already informed the court in 2018 that Thétard was unwilling to return to South Africa to testify, describing it as “strange” that the company would now argue that his death fatally weakens its defence.

The judge maintained that any actual prejudice can only be properly assessed once evidence is led at trial. Thales’ grounds for appeal include its argument that it has extensively demonstrated its inability to challenge the state’s key evidence or present its own evidence on several charges because such information lay within the personal knowledge of the deceased witnesses. The company maintains that no other individuals possess this knowledge. While the state has conceded that it would not dispute the admissibility of certain hearsay evidence at trial, it has not admitted the correctness of that evidence.

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