Judgement was reserved on Thursday morning in the Democratic Alliance’s (DA's) application to have the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA's) decision to drop 738 charges against President Jacob Zuma set aside.

After hearing the matter for three consecutive days, deputy judge president, Aubrey Ledwaba, accompanied by two other judges in the High Court in Pretoria said judgement will be communicated to the parties soon.

“The court would like to thank all the counsel for their detailed submissions and heads of argument which will indeed assist us as we deal with the judgment. We are well aware that this is an important matter. The public has interest in it and we will see to it that judgement is delivered in due course and all the parties will be informed accordingly,” Ledwaba said before adjourning the court.

For three days, the full bench of three judges, led by Ledwaba was hearing representations on the circumstances and implications of the 2009 controversial decision by then acting National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Mokotedi Mpshe to drop 783 charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering against Zuma.

Zuma’s attorney, Kemp J Kemp SC told the court that a manipulation of the prosecution processes against the president was simply aimed at crippling him in the race for the ANC presidency at the watershed Polokwane conference in 2007.

“It would be an enormous mistake, an enormous abuse of the NPA (National Prosecution Authority) powers. The fact that it didn’t work out in this case, matters not. As a result of this strategy, Mr Zuma would then not be president, Zuma would have suffered a loss at Polokwane. Mr Mpshe’s decision (to drop charges) was about the enormity of what you were trying to achieve,” said Kemp.

“If the DA is saying because things didn’t happen that way, then it is nothing, then we deserve to be told that. People should know that nothing really happens if somebody in the NPA does something like that.”

Kemp argued that the transcripts of secretly recorded phone calls, including conversations between former prosecutions boss Bulelani Ngcuka and Scorpions chief Leonard McCarthy, commonly referred as the “spy tapes”, indicate that the prosecution of Zuma was being used “to secure certain political results”.

For the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), advocate Hilton Epstein SC argued that it became vital for then acting National Director of the NDPP, Mpshe, to drop the raft of charges against Zuma in 2009, once he realised the prosecution process had been tainted by political agendas.

“At the end of the day, we know that this is the discretion, which the Constitution and the legislation repose in the national director (of the NPA). It is his discretion and courts will not interfere unless there are exceptional circumstances to do so,” NPA counsel Hilton Epstein SC told the full bench of judges.

Epstein said it was more important to protect the reputation of the NPA than to pursue one individual.

“Unless the public repose trust in the NPA, then the democracy in our country fails. There is nothing more important. You can’t have a constitutional democracy unless you have an independent prosecutorial authority,” said Epstein.

“One has to ask the question, as Mpshe did: ‘Is it more important to pursue the conviction of one person, put out of your mind that this is the President, even when the merits may appear to be good or is it rather more important to assure the public that at any cost, the prosecutorial authority will not be impeded, affected and influenced by outsiders and will always remain independent?’“

He said in courts, critical evidence could be inadmissible even though it is critical.

“It’s like the judiciary, there may be cases where your lordships have and will hear strong evidence against an accused, but it is inadmissible. It is hearsay. You have to ignore it and that person has to walk free,” said Epstein.

The DA, through advocate Sean Rosenberg SC, told the court that the Ngcuka and McCarthy discussions which Mpshe based as the reason for quashing the prosecution, were insignificant.

“What appears is that the decision of Mpshe, it was not a reasoned decision. We submit that at that stage, it wasn’t a rational decision backed by any reasons,” he said.

“It was a decision which reflected his (Mpshe) own sense of betrayal and anger and outrage over McCarthy’s conduct. We will submit that as at April 2009, unreasonable and impulsive as it was, it was not a rational decision. The reasons were worked out and developed and articulated in the press announcement of April 6 2009.”

The raft of charges stemmed from the country’s 1999 arms deal and the decision by Mpshe to withdraw these, paving the way for Zuma’s election as president the following month.

The DA went to court soon after, but the actual review has been more than six years in the coming because of a lengthy case within a case to secure the release of the so-called spytapes, wiretaps of phone calls Mpshe said indicated that the timing of the charges was manipulated by supporters of former president Thabo Mbeki.