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Hounding of Zuma 'a ploy to discredit him'

Sowetan Reporter and Sapa

Sowetan Reporter and Sapa

The ANC Youth League yesterday said the case against ANC president Jacob Zuma was aimed at disrupting next year's election

"We will be answering questions about the rape and corruption cases rather than explaining the election manifesto," ANCYL president Julius Malema said at a Chris Hani workers' heritage exhibition in Johannesburg.

"We will be going to court rather than to stadiums."

Zuma is expected to appear in court in August on charges relating to corruption and money laundering.

Malema said the charges against Zuma were a political ploy to project dishonest ANC leaders.

"Those who were bitter that Zuma was elected president were quick to charge him and issue a court date without following proper procedures," he said.

Malema also said the claims that SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande received a R500000 donation that he could not account for was part of the campaign to tarnish the image of leaders in the tripartite alliance.

"The allegation that a leader of the alliance received R500000 in a bag transported in the boot of a car, and that leaders of Cosatu misused a credit card, were only aimed at projecting these leaders as corrupt, ready to steal from the poor," Malema said.

The Chris Hani workers' exhibition is aimed at informing people about the struggle of workers and the role Hani played in modeling the current democracy.

Hani was the leader of the SACP and chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the former military wing of the ANC.

He was assassinated on April 10 1993 outside his home in Dawn Park in Boksburg. Polish immigrant Janusz Walus shot him in the head as he stepped out of his car.

Walus and a senior member of the Conservative Party, Clive Derby-Lewis, were subsequently arrested for Hani's murder.

Both were sentenced to death but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1995.

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