WATCH | ‘Unfair and unjust’ – Zuma defends daughter amid charges

Duduzile Zuma

Cape Town – Former president Jacob Zuma has questioned the charges against his daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, suggesting her arrest is politically motivated.

Zuma-Sambudla appeared in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, where she was released on a warning and will face trial in the KZN High Court on 20 March.

She faces charges of incitement to commit terrorism and public violence, linked to her social media posts during the 2021 riots.

Zuma dismissed the case as baseless, accusing authorities of targeting his family and party.

“We have just been in court, but we cannot figure out what case is levelled against Duduzile. If you write on Twitter and say ‘I see you’, is that a crime? Today, we are here for that after four years. A girl child writes on Twitter, ‘we see you’, she’d be charged today.

“They are now arresting my child because they don’t like her, nor do they like her father or the party that he leads. Are we going to keep quiet? Other people who were found with money under a mattress were not arrested,” said Zuma.

The NPA, however, defended the case, describing it as complex and unprecedented due to its reliance on social media evidence.

Prosecutors argue that Zuma-Sambudla’s tweets encouraged violence to secure her father’s release.

“This is the first time that the NPA is charging based on content posted on what we call X, which was previously known as Twitter, for content we consider to be amounting to be inciting to commit terrorism,” National Prosecution Authority (NPA) spokesperson Advocate Mthunzi Mhaga said.

“It’s a unique case, complex in nature, in the sense that reliance on the investigation and evidence is based on social media posts. It’s a technical investigation. It is an investigation that some of the parts of the investigative process has to be outsourced in terms of experts on social media, because Saps [South African Police Service] doesn’t have an expert on social media.”

He added: “There are issues of images that need to be interpreted by an expert in that field. There are procurement processes that need to be followed in order to source or procure that investigative source.”

The case was initiated by Forensics for Justice’s Paul O’Sullivan, who provided a forensic report detailing her tweets during the unrest, which left over 350 people dead.

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