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The Star<\/p>\n
Senior Durban advocate Guido Penzhorn has confirmed, for the first time, that he was asked personally by President Jacob Zuma in February to head the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).<\/p>\n
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Durban – Senior Durban advocate Guido Penzhorn has confirmed, for the first time, that he was asked personally by President Jacob Zuma in February to head the Special Investigating Unit (SIU). <\/p>\n
But, addressing delegates at the Institute of Commercial Forensic Practitioners in Boksburg on Monday, Penzhorn said that he had heard nothing more and had \u201csimply got on with my practice\u201d. <\/p>\n
Media speculation was that Penzhorn had got the job but Zuma wanted to announce this along with the appointment of Pinetown magistrate Stanley Gumede as the new national director of public prosecutions. <\/p>\n
On Monday night Presidency spokesman Mac Maharaj said Zuma was still considering the appointments. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe matter is still receiving the attention of President Jacob Zuma,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be inappropriate to disclose the names of the candidates that are under consideration, in order to protect their privacy as well as the integrity of the process and the institution,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Gumede\u2019s appointment hit a snag when it was revealed that prosecutors had laid complaints against him with the Magistrate\u2019s Commission which were still unresolved. <\/p>\n
Gumede confirmed to reporters that he had been approached by Zuma\u2019s lawyer, Michael Hulley, and had been offered the job by Zuma himself, but Penzhorn has declined to be interviewed on the matter. <\/p>\n
On Monday, he broke his silence. In a prepared speech, he praised Zuma for inviting \u201can independent outsider\u201d to head the unit which \u201cspeaks volumes of his commitment to eradicating corruption in state institutions\u201d. <\/p>\n
He had accepted the job to \u201cput something back\u201d and use the expertise he had acquired as the prosecutor in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project corruption cases. He believed he could do so without interference and with professional independence. <\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, since then, I have heard nothing from the Department of Justice, which is supposed to give effect to my appointment. <\/p>\n
It is the president\u2019s prerogative to appoint whoever he wants\u2026 and I wish him or her all the very best in further moulding the SIU into the invaluable tool it can be in the fight against corruption.\u201d <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Gumede\u2019s legal team dealing with the seven charges of misconduct against him had a setback when its request for further documents was declined by the Magistrate\u2019s Commission. <\/p>\n
Gumede\u2019s team is made up of attorney Thami Ndlovu and advocates Jimmy Howse and and Vinay Gajoo SC. They met on Friday to discuss how to respond to the charges and had asked for further documents. <\/p>\n
But on Monday they were told that the head of the commission had declined their request, saying they were not entitled to them. <\/p>\n
The Star and Sapa<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n * If you use Gmail to read IOL’s newsletters, note that Google is rolling out a new tabbed inbox that filters your mail into 5 separate tabs – Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. IOL emails will probably be sent to the \u201cPromotions\u201d tab instead of the \u201cPrimary\u201d tab. If you don’t want it that way, drag the newsletter from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab. An alert will pop up. Click \u201cyes\u201d and your newsletters will continue to go to your Primary inbox. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Star Senior Durban advocate Guido Penzhorn has confirmed, for the first time, that he was asked personally by President Jacob Zuma in February to head the Special Investigating Unit (SIU). Durban – Senior Durban advocate Guido Penzhorn has confirmed, for the first time, that he was asked personally by President Jacob Zuma in February […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-21524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}