South Africa: resumption of the Zuma trial under high security

The trial of former South African President Jacob Zuma resumed Monday, July 19 under tight security after more than a week of riots that shook the country.

Read also: South Africa: Zuma in court Monday for corruption, after the riots

The trigger for the violence, which began on July 9, was the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma, in a separate case where he was convicted of contempt of justice.

Looting and fires, initially concentrated in Zulu country (east), had spread to Johannesburg, the economic heart of the country.

Army and police secure the area

Monday morning, soldiers and police were positioned in number in the center of Pietermaritzburg, the capital of the province of Kwazulu-Natal, where the court is located, which was yet to conduct a virtual hearing, according to journalists present on the spot.

The adjacent streets were grid-lined and a helicopter was flying over the area.

Zuma, dark suit and red tie, appeared on screen from his Estcourt prison, less than a hundred kilometers away.

Zuma's lawyers wrote to the court on Sunday to challenge the potential for the hearing because it violated their client's constitutional rights.

But Judge Piet Koen refused, saying the decision was linked to instability in the province.

Jacob Zuma faces 16 charges. He was forced to resign in 2018 after the revelation of a series of scandals. Two years earlier, a damning report detailed in particular how a sibling of businessmen of Indian origin, the Gupta, had plundered public resources under his presidency, from 2009 to 2018.