Defining moment for Zuma and e-tolls

There is anticipation in the air about the imminent answers to e-tolling and Zuma’s corruption scandal.

The DA has received the South African National Roads Agency Limited’s (Sanral’s) contract documentation on e-tolling in Gauteng following the opposition party’s successful request for the documents.

The contract consists of 17 lever-arch folders with 24 tender documents, a similar number of addendums, eight clarifications, four contracts, and the electronic toll collections offer. But a financial memorandum of the tender documentation and two items of the offer were missing which the DA will be requesting urgently.

The timing could not have been more perfect, with a Supreme Court of Appeals challenge on e-tolling looming, as information contained in the documents could decide the fate of the project ahead of the court hearing in September.

Most importantly, the document could eventually shed some light on why the government would so stubbornly forge ahead with a project no one wanted.

The second issue involves the spy tapes that led the National Prosecuting Authority to drop charges against the then ANC president Jacob Zuma which paved his way to the State Presidency.

The North Gauteng High Court has ruled in favour of the DA, and ordered that these be handed over within five days.

The tapes include internal memoranda, reports or minutes of meetings dealing with the contents of the recordings and the transcript itself.

There are massive implications should a review find that there was no basis to drop the charges against Zuma: the President may be charged and forced to vacate his position.

Zuma has ducked and dived from the law a few times in his march to the Presidency, and if he is proven innocent, he would start his second and last term with a clean slate.

With regards to Sanral and the missing items in the contract document, only people with skeletons in their closets get rid of evidence and hope no one will notice.