The more than 20-year corruption case against former South African President Jacob Zuma and French arms manufacturer Thales has been postponed again by the Pietermaritzburg High Court.

Judge Piet Koen has decided to postpone the corruption case until October 17 due to an appeal pending in the Constitutional Court submitted by the former South African head of state to have the prosecutor, lawyer Billy Downer, removed from the trial of the case.
Zuma, 80, and a representative of the French arms manufacturer Thales did not appear in court by court order.

In May, Judge Piet Koen postponed the case until today (yesterday) saying that a decision by the president of the country's Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein was pending.

Judge Mandisa Maya, chair of the SCA, subsequently dismissed Zuma's application to appeal Judge Koen's dismissal of a special application in the lower court in Pietermaritzburg, which sought the prosecutor's removal from the trial of the case.

The decision was announced on February 16 by Judge Piet Koen, on the grounds that he "lacks reasonable arguments" to accept the removal of the prosecutor.
Following Judge Maya's dismissal, Zuma appealed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa...

The former president and Thales face charges of fraud, extortion, corruption, tax evasion and money laundering in a multibillion-dollar arms procurement public corruption case more than 20 years old in which the French arms company is accused of bribing the former head of state.

Zuma, who was President of the Republic between 2009 and 2018 faces 18 related charges, including fraud, corruption, money laundering and extortion, related to the purchase of military equipment from five European arms companies in 1999 when he was South Africa's vice president. In 2018, Zuma was forced to resign after a series of scandals.
The French defense manufacturer is also facing charges of corruption and money laundering. Both Zuma and the Thales group have denied the charges.

The case of alleged corruption in the procurement of arms by the South African state was the biggest public corruption scandal in the first five years of democracy in South Africa, following the corruption scandal surrounding the theatrical play Sarafina in 1996 under former president Nelson Mandela.(NMinuto)