Graft charges against former Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Zizi Kodwa and his co-accused, former Enterprise Outsourcing Holdings director Jehan MacKay, have been dropped.
The charges stemmed from allegations that Kodwa received more than R1.6 million in gratuities in exchange for his influence over multi-million-rand IT tenders for the government.
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Kodwa and MacKay made a brief appearance before the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Palm Ridge on Friday morning.
Legal Proceedings and Court Decisions
During a prior court appearance, Magistrate Phillip Venter stated that he could not rule out the possibility of additional postponements if new information is presented in court.
“I take note of the request by Mr Cordwell that the court should consider marking this a final remand for the purposes of the outcome of their presentations. Whenever an application is made for a remand, the court must assess whether there is good justification provided to the court by the applicant in order for you to grab a remand.
“I have to weigh that up against the time that we’re going to have to postpone the matter for, and the prejudice suffered by not only yourselves but also by the states and their witnesses that are all awaiting their opportunity to testify in court, so there’s a magnitude of issues that I have to weigh up every time a postponement request is made. A postponement request is not just there for the taking.
“It has to be motivated, now. Part of my assessment is, and that is from a case-flow-management perspective. I’m satisfied, thus far, that every time I’ve heard a remand application, progress is being made quickly. I cannot see that there have been any undue delays at this stage.
“It may happen that before the 1st of November, your legal representatives may get a communication from the DPP’s office requesting certain further information from you, and that information may materially affect the outcome of that representation, even favouring you, which may cause another remand to be granted by the court.”
During court proceedings on Friday morning, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) announced a decision to withdraw the charges.
“The worship will note that attached to today’s (Friday) appearance is the correspondence from the deputy director of Gauteng Advocate Chauke dated 31st October 2024 and the decision is that the charges against both accused should be withdrawn. As a result, the state is now withdrawing the charges against, accused.”
Future Aspirations
After the court ruling, Zizi Kodwa shared his thoughts with the media. He expressed gratitude for the withdrawal of the charges and conveyed his eagerness to return to work, stating, “I am really grateful that I am now talking to you as a freeman.”
He aims to realign with the activities of the African National Congress (ANC) and mentioned his availability for potential job opportunities in journalism. “I am now on the job market, I am now available, I can be a journalist. As you know, I am unemployed.”
Kodwa explained his decision to resign from his position as a minister and member of Parliament at the beginning of the case.
He also stepped down from his roles within the National Working Committee and the National Executive Committee of the ANC.
“When we heard about this, the same day we appeared, we took a decision as a minister to resign. It was not an easy decision because there’s no law that requires that if you are charged as a serving minister, you must resign, but I thought it would be inappropriate of a serving minister to have all these charges.
“Let me ask the president to release me and consider it and we just have time to deal with this matter. I subsequently and simultaneously in line with the resolutions of the 55th conference of the ANC, step aside from all activities of the African national congress and all this happened without any structures.
“I do both of these decisions voluntarily and that was quite important, but also important was that we needed to uphold the principle of the rule of law that we are equal before the law.
“Whether we are a minister, whether the crime is alleged was committed in 2015, we are now in 2020. We are not a minister at that time. I was not in government; I could not influence anything at that time. I was just a mere spokesperson.
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“In spite of all those reservations and observations, it was important that I affirm the principle that you are equal before the law and I gave my full cooperation to law enforcement in this country, the hawks, the NPA, and I’m sure in our first application when we’re doing a bill application and my representative Mr Majavu read it quite very clear how much we went a great extent to cooperate with the law enforcement.
“It’s very important and we must say that as a leadership, so that there’s no impression that there’s preferential treatment of anybody. I was saying to somebody coming here on the first day I was put inside the Oxfam not because I’m a minister. I understood it that anybody must go through that and it’s important to reaffirm those principles of equality, but nobody’s above the law,” Kodwa said.
