Since taking the Oath of Office six years ago, President Jacob Zuma has spent an estimated R45-million defending various court actions. And in a twisted irony, the Constitutional Court, which found in March this year that Zuma had violated his oath of office, ordered that “the President, the Minister of Police and the National Assembly must pay costs of the application including costs of two counsel”. They will not, of course, be dipping into their own war chest to find this refund. We, the taxpayers, will pay in the end.

Meanwhile, the NPA is “pulling out all the stops” to prevent President Zuma from facing the 783-odd charges of corruption, fraud and racketeering a full bench of the Pretoria High Court ruled should be reinstated. NPA head Shaun Abrahams has filed papers with the ConCourt seeking leave to appeal the High Court’s June ruling. It is a battle most legal experts say the NPA is unlikely to win.

But who cares? In this world, money grows on trees – taxpayer trees.

Over at the SABC, access to funds for legal matters too appears not to present an obstacle for COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng who has been able to rely not only on the tacit support of President Zuma and Minister of Communications Faith Muthambi, but also a seemingly bottomless well of money for the hugely costly legal teams who have represented him in various High Court actions.

Motsoeneng’s behaviour mirrors that of Number One with regard to challenging the remedial action of the Public Protector as well as other High Court rulings. The SABC has denied that it is footing the bill for Motsoeneng and has said that it would be claiming these legal fees from its insurance.

In a written reply to a parliamentary question in 2015, Muthambi said that the introduction of the Companies Act in 2008 had required all companies to take out insurance for directors’ liability.

“The SABC as such took an insurance cover and all legal fees for Mr Hlaudi Motsoeneng were submitted to the insurers for payment,” she said.

In an opinion piece this weekend, Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the Constitution (CASAC), pointed out that while the Public Protector had to beg Treasury for R3-million to investigate allegations of state capture, the Hawks (headed by the discredited Lieutenant-General Mthandazo Ntlemeza) on the other hand have a bonanza big budget of R1.4-billion.

Naidoo said recent evidence suggested that the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) was “failing to meet the standards of operational independence set by the courts, while paying lip service to its structural autonomy”.

“This is becoming clearer by the day. The targeting of the minister of finance for his alleged role in the ‘rogue spy unit’ at SARS exemplifies the political strategy of the Hawks,” he noted.

In other words, political trials are tragically still a feature in democratic South Africa.

Only this time, there is no organisation like the International Defence Aid Trust (IDAF) to assist those who are persecuted.

Between 1956 and and 1991, the British Defence Aid Fund (which later became the International Defence Aid Fund) funded tens of thousands of legal matters, including trials, appeals, stays of execution, inquests and commissions of enquiry in apartheid South Africa.

The fund was set up by by Canon John Collins, a powerful campaigner for social justice who also established the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as well as the Anti-Apartheid Movement. He established the fund after visiting South Africa in 1954 and in response to the Treason Trial. The funds went towards paying activists’ legal expenses and to care for their families. In 1966 the South African branch of the fund was banned while government harassed and persecuted lawyers and activists in the country who worked for DAF.

On Monday, the trial of Glynnis Breytenbach, former NPA prosecutor and now DA Shadow Minister of Justice, and that of her attorney, Gerhard Wagenaar, kicked off in the Pretoria North Magistrate’s Court. Breytenbach and Wagenaar face charges of defeating the ends of justice as well as a contravention of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Act. Breytenbach faces two additional charges of fraud and perjury.

Breytenbach, who maintains the current criminal prosecution is malicious (she was cleared of the same charges in an internal disciplinary hearing), has also claimed that her original suspension was because she had opposed a decision to withdraw fraud and corruption charges against former crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli, a Zuma ally.

In 2013 expenses Breytenbach had incurred trying to get reinstated were carried by the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Centre for Constitutional Rights (CFCR). At the time CFCR said that it had decided to fund Breytenbach’s defence as part of its mission “to promote and defend the Constitution and rule of law”.

Defending yourself or taking the state or an arm of the state to court is a costly business and it can be utterly crippling. The Democratic Alliance forked out over R10-million taking the “spy tapes” matter through the court system. The party has also paid millions in legal fees ensuring that Motsoeneng’s appointment be declared “irrational”.

At present, individuals who have found themselves branded, purged and excommunicated from President Zuma’s inner circle have found themselves out in a frozen economic tundra, struggling to find work and buckling under the weight of threatened criminal charges and concomitant exorbitant legal costs. They have become the new “untouchables”, a walking warning to those who would cross Zuma.

And in these chilly times it is hard to hold on to principle, it seems.

But no matter, ‘tis all recorded in the big book of history.

There are individuals like former IPID head, Robert McBride, former head of the Hawks, Anwa Dramat, former Gauteng Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya as well as forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan who have found themselves firmly in the cross hairs of the Hawks and the NPA. In all of these cases the accused say charges are trumped up.

Also out in the cold and possibly facing criminal charges are former SARS deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay, former SARS Group Executive, Johann van Loggerenberg as well as former spokesman Adrian Lackay. And unlike during the Mbeki era, when those who were “purged” could easily find employment outside of the ANC, life on the periphery of the ruling party under Jacob Zuma’s leadership is brutal – a style Motsoeneng appears to favour, having fired on Monday four of the SABC journalists who have spoken out about his ‘leadership’ and the imposed censorship, this only weeks away from the local government elections.

Many principled professionals who have lost their jobs are suffering in silence.

McBride was suspended as head of IPID in March 2015 after allegations that he had altered an IPID report implicating Dramat in an alleged illegal rendition of five Zimbabweans. Major-General Sibiya and Captain Lesley Maluleke have also been charged in the same matter.

In May Dramat, Pillay and McBride issued a joint statement about a political conspiracy they maintain is threatening the country’s public institutions. The three men said that there were “remarkable coincidences” to recent events at the Hawks, IPID, SARS, Crime Intelligence in the SAPS, the State Security Agency, Denel and the NPA.

“In our view, attacks on individuals in these institutions are aimed at undermining the fight against corruption. A key part of all of our mandates was to investigate cases of corruption. In reviewing our individual experiences over recent weeks, we have discovered a convergence in the cases that we were working on,” the statement read.

The three men added that a common thread was that cases under investigation involved individuals or entities with questionable relationships to those in public office.

“Most of these cases involved state tenders of some kind that were awarded due to patronage with influential individuals in public office.” Methods used to purge officials, they added, followed a distinct pattern.

Dramat, Pillay and McBride said that this “pattern of questionable processes” also applied to investigations by the Hawks into finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

Since he has found himself falling foul of the “powers that be” McBride has had to fund his own legal battles. Daily Maverick has learnt that he has spent more than R1.2-million defending an internal disciplinary hearing, a labour court application, the High Court as well as a later Constitutional Court Application.

Dramat too has been funding his own legal defence.

O’Sullivan, who returned to South Africa on July 15 under the threat of arrest from the Hawks, spent about R10-million of his own money building a case against former police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who was convicted on charges of corruption in 2010.

O’Sullivan, who had just lost a lucrative job as Group Executive of Aviation Security at ACSA, sold his house and his plane to fund the Selebi investigation between 2001 and 2007. After Selebi’s conviction O’Sullivan managed to rebuild his business.

At present, however, after he lodged at least 18 criminal cases against various current and former police and public officials and politicians, including Hawks head Major-General Ntlemeza, current Acting Police Commissioner Kgomotso Phahlane, retired head of detectives Lieutenant-General Vinesh Moonoo, as well as SAA Chair Dudu Myeni, former Prasa CEO Lucky Montana and Jacob Zuma himself, O’Sullivan has been placed under renewed pressure.

O’Sullivan is again facing huge legal bills as the Hawks have turned on him, arresting him on 1 April on charges of contravening the SA Citizens’ Act. In the meantime the Hawks and the NPA have vowed to bring several more charges against O’Sullivan.

“It’s very different this time. With Selebi, they threatened to arrest me but never did. Now I have a pack of them coming at me. I have had to sell my Land Rover and the micro bus I used to use to transport my family when they are all here. It’s tough but I am determined. I will not give up,” O’Sullivan told Daily Maverick. DM

Original photos: President Jacob Zuma (Sapa), SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng (Steven Kang), NPA head Shaun Abrahams (GCIS), The Hawks boss Mthandazo Ntlemeza (CityPress)