Kodwa, MacKay graft case suffers another delay
The case against former minister Zizi Kodwa and his co-accused, former EOH director Jehan MacKay, has been postponed until October for the outcome of representations.
The duo faces charges related to claims that Kodwa received gratifications amounting to more than R1.6 million in return for his influence over multi-million IT tenders for the government.
Kodwa and MacKay appeared briefly before the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Palm Ridge on Tuesday where it emerged that the Director of Public Prosecutions was yet to receive representations from MacKay’s legal team.
MacKay’s lawyer, Ian Small-Smith, said he was not sure how the representations had not reached the DPP, as he had stated in the letter to the unit head for commercial crimes in the National Prosecuting Authority, Gideon Nkoana, that if he declined to entertain them, they would be escalated to the DPP.
At the last sitting, the state did confirm that Nkoana had rejected MacKay’s representations.
READ MORE: Kodwa, MacKay corruption case postponed to September
“I undertake to, in this week, have the representations resubmitted to Mr Chauke, and I am sure that we will have a decision from him well in advance of the [3rd] of October,” said Small-Smith.
Kodwa’s lawyer, Zola Majavu, expressed his client’s frustration over the delays, saying each postponement amounted to significant prejudice against him.
"I did give an advanced warning that if, come today, there are delays that have nothing to do with my client, we may wish to reconsider our position. Where am I going with this? I am giving a hint that in the fullness of time, we might consider bringing an application for separation of trials,” Majavu told the court.
The politician stepped down from his position as minister moments after his first court appearance following his arrest in June.
However, less than a month later, he returned as MP for the African National Congress under the seventh administration.
Kodwa has since also resigned as an MP.
“My client is an office bearer who, because of this spurious case, has had to resign. It’s a matter of public record that he was a minister in the sixth national government and could easily have been a minister in the seventh national government. But because he does not locate himself above the law. On pain of his own conscience, he decided that it would be best to resign so that he could focus on this criminal trial.
“Now we are in a situation where he is co-charged with someone whose rights we equally respect, but the net impact of all of this ping-pong has a direct impact on him.”
Both men are out on R30,000 bail and will return to court in October.
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