Magashule to meet with Zuma at Nkandla

The meeting forms part of a series of consultations Magashule will have with former party leaders about the ANC’s step-aside rule.

 

The ANC national executive committee has given Magashule, and other party members who are facing serious criminal charges, 30 days to vacate their positions or face suspension.

 

Magashule has repeatedly refused to step aside, saying only the party’s branches are empowered to remove him from his office. He is facing several charges of fraud and corruption stemming from his time as Free State premier. 

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He has been charged for his alleged involvement in the R255m Free State asbestos roofing saga. 

 

The meeting also comes a day after Zuma declined a Constitutional Court directive to suggest how he should be punished if found guilty of defying an order to testify in a corruption hearing.

 

Last week the apex court directed him to suggest an appropriate sentence after the panel sought a two-year jail term for contempt.

 

The 79-year-old had until Wednesday to make the suggestion, but the defiant Zuma chose to send a scathing 21-page letter to Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng criticising the judiciary instead.

 

"As currently framed the directions –- to the extent they purport to give me a right to a hearing on the question of sanction -– it is a sham and an attempt to sanitise the gravity of the repressive manner in which the court has dealt with my issues," he wrote.

 

Zuma said he had "thought long and hard" about the directive and had decided against filing an affidavit. 

 

He had already skipped the hearing last month.

 

"My decision not to participate in the contempt of court proceedings was based on my belief that my participation would not change the atmosphere of judicial hostility and humiliation reflected in its judgement against me," said Zuma.