Jacob Zuma's day in court has come. Well, not the big day that everyone anticipates, but the ANC's president and South Africa's presumed successor to Thabo Mbeki has appeared before the Constitutional Court to determine which documents might be able to be used against Zuma (and the French arms company, Thint) and which may be excluded. The question swings on whether the Scorpions search and seizure that secured the documents in 2005 was legitimate. The final decision will inevitably play a huge role in Zuma's corruption case. Exclusion would represent a major victory for Zuma and a defeat for the state. But if the court allows the documents to be included, Zuma's defense might be in trouble.
In the meantime, Zuma recently gave an extensive and wide-ranging interview to the Financial Times last week in which one of the central issues was the seemingly contested nature of internal ANC politics. The tone of the interview (or at least the interviewer) and a story that accompanied it raised the ire of the ANC and its spokesman Jessie Duartie, who felt the need to write in to the Financial Times with a rejoinder. Zuma and his people seem to have had to clarify comments to the media quite regularly of late, which brings about the question of the kind of relationship Zuma and the ANC will have with the press during a Zuma presidency. Naturally much depends on the outcome of his trial, but even Thabo Mbeki had a honeymoon period with the media, however short it must have seemed from Mbeki's perspective.