Zuma scores court hat-trick over South Africa election
By Rafieka Williams & Lucy Fleming
South Africa’s battle-scarred former President Jacob Zuma is proving he still has a winning streak – recently scoring a hat-trick in the courtroom.
For the third time in the last month the 82-year-old has thwarted attempts to stop him, or his new party, from contesting the general election at the end of May.
His latest victory came on Monday in the Durban High Court, where the governing African National Congress (ANC) tried to force his party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), to drop its name and logo.
This is because it is named after the now disbanded armed wing of the ANC, which fought against white-minority rule that ended with the election of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela in 1994.
The ANC argued that trademark law had been breached and that the use of the name, which translates as Spear of the Nation, would lead to voter confusion in the upcoming May polls. The judge disagreed.
“It’s a big victory for MK politically and financially. They would’ve had to start all over again if they lost. It would’ve crippled them completely financially,” Paddy Harper, the South African Mail & Guardian newspaper’s KwaZulu-Natal correspondent, told the BBC.
“They launched the manifesto essentially online this last weekend,” he says, about the two-page document which is big on headlines and thin on detail.
“This tells you that they don’t have the money, so starting the campaign with a different logo would’ve set them back massively.”
