Jacob Zuma, South Africa\u2019s former president, will appear at the Durban High Court on Friday to face more than a dozen corruption charges that date back to a fraught $2.5billion arms deal in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n
At least 2,000 supporters of the former president are also expected to turn up to the proceedings and protest against the charges levelled at him.<\/p>\n
Those defending Zuma argue that the courts are compromised and biased against him.<\/p>\n
Zuma, 75, faces 16 charges of corruption, racketeering and fraud, including taking bribes from a French arms manufacturer in a set of accusations that have long dogged his political career.<\/p>\n
The French manufacturer will also be charged with corruption. Company representatives are expected to appear in court alongside Zuma.<\/p>\n
Zuma\u2019s expected court appearance has been welcomed by South African civil society and trade unions, including the powerful National Union of Metal Workers (Numsa).<\/p>\n
Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, acting spokesperson for Numsa, told Al Jazeera that Zuma\u2019s court appearance \u201cwas well overdue\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Numsa, we welcome the fact that he will be in court. We called for corruption charges to be ventilated in court a long time ago. So we look forward,\u201d Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said.<\/p>\n
Likewise, former ANC legislator and arms-deal activist, Andrew Feinstein, told AFP news agency that there was overwhelming evidence against Zuma and that he \u201cshould find himself in jail\u201d.\u2014Aljazeera<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jacob Zuma, South Africa\u2019s former president, will appear at the Durban High Court on Friday to face more than a dozen corruption charges that date back to a fraught $2.5billion arms deal in the mid-1990s. At least 2,000 supporters of the former president are also expected to turn up to the proceedings and protest against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63554,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63551\/revisions\/63554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}