Former president Jacob Zuma's latest bid to force the removal of his corruption prosecutor Billy Downer is already dead in the water, says the State, because the pillars of his case "have been repeatedly and emphatically dismissed" in six different court rulings.

"These emphatic and repeated dismissals of Mr Zuma's pillars are fatal to his current attempt to resurrect them to avoid his day in court," the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) argued in papers filed at the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg. 

It is the State's case Zuma was kept on a corrupt retainer by his former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, who then used his political clout to further his own business interests.

The NPA also claimed Shaik facilitated a R500 000 a year bribe for Zuma from French arms company Thales, in exchange for his "political protection" from a potentially damaging Arms Deal inquiry.

After 18 years of protracted litigation, the charges against Zuma being unlawfully withdrawn and then reinstated and the former president's repeated unsuccessful accusations of wrongdoing against the State, the NPA has yet to lead its first witness against Zuma.

Downer has made it clear the NPA will push for the former president's trial to proceed, despite whatever appeals may follow his 26 October bid to again force the prosecutor's removal, if that bid is (again) unsuccessful.

The State said, because the complaints Zuma was pursuing against Downer had already been adjudicated and dismissed by competent courts, it was not permissible for him to again raise those complaints in another court application. 

Zuma had previously tried, unsuccessfully, to force Downer's removal by challenging his title to prosecute him on a dozen different grounds, including his claim the prosecutor had been party to the unlawful leaking of court papers - containing a sick note from his military doctor Brigadier Mcebisi Mdutywa - to this writer.

Judge Piet Koen ruled none of these complaints justified Downer being stripped of his ability to pursue the State's Arms Deal corruption case against Zuma and found Mdutywa's letter, in any event, was vague and had not disclosed any confidential information about the former president's medical condition.

After pointing out Zuma's lawyers had attached the Mdutywa letter to his application for a trial postponement and had obtained a confirmatory affidavit from the doctor, the NPA said it was "clear that Mr Zuma's side intended from the outset to introduce General Mdutywa's letter in evidence on public record".

When Zuma nonetheless sought to pursue a private prosecution against Downer and this writer for alleged violations of the NPA Act over the sharing of the court papers - which Downer has repeatedly been found to have not been involved in - a full bench of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg dismissed his case as a baseless abuse of process.

In addition, the full bench found Zuma's private prosecution against Downer was a continuation of his so-called Stalingrad campaign to avoid ever facing trial through constant challenges to the case against him.

It granted an order that would enforce its ruling as Zuma attempted to appeal it, in a judgment that was upheld, unanimously, by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

Writing on behalf of a full bench of the SCA, Judge Nathan Ponnan said the facts demonstrated "that the private prosecution of Mr Downer is an abuse of the process of the court" because it was "instituted as a further step in a sustained attempt by Mr Zuma to obstruct, delay and prevent his criminal trial" and "to have Mr Downer removed as the prosecutor in Mr Zuma's trial".

This "ulterior purpose" rendered the private prosecution unlawful, he said before adding the charges Zuma had sought to pursue against Downer and this writer was "patently a hopeless case" and "obviously unsustainable". 

Even though his attempts to appeal the invalidation of his private prosecution have thus far met with failure, Zuma insists it is still enough to justify Downer's removal as his prosecutor.

He is also adamant he is not trying to revive legal disputes that have already been decisively dealt with by Koen. 

"I state this specifically to distinguish the substantive matters arising in this application as being distinct from those that were raised in [the First Removal application].

"The cause of action is different and the primary grounds concern developments such as the private prosecution, which only occurred well after the [First Removal] judgment," he stated in court papers.

According to the NPA, however, "this attempt does not avail Mr Zuma".

The "only pillar" of Zuma's second application for Downer's removal that is based on events subsequent to his first failed removal case is his now invalidated private prosecution, it argued - and this was "merely a contrived private prosecution".

The full court in any event more recently held in the abuse and enforcement judgments that Mr Zuma's private prosecution was an abuse of the process of court which it set aside.

While Zuma is now petitioning the SCA to appeal the invalidation of his private prosecution, the State argued his efforts to keep that case alive were not enough to justify his second application for Downer's removal.

"Mr Zuma seems to contend that it is still open to him in this application, that is, in his second application for Mr Downer's removal, to rely on his private prosecution for as long as there is still some life in it, pending the outcome of an application for leave to appeal. But that is not so," the NPA argued. 

"The question in this case is not whether there is still life in the private prosecution. The question is whether the private prosecution constitutes a ground for Mr Downer's removal. It clearly does not even if there is still some life in it."