A new chapter in South Africa’s long-running Zuma saga is set to begin with the 43-year-old daughter of the former president due to go on trial this week on terrorism-related charges.
In what is believed to be a first for the country, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla is being prosecuted over what she wrote on social media four years ago during deadly protests.
Jacob Zuma’s nine-year presidency, littered with controversies, came to a halt in 2018 amid extensive graft allegations – all denied.
Then, in 2021, he was jailed for failing to show up at a corruption inquiry, triggering protests and the worst scenes of violence since before the start of the democratic era in 1994.
A week of anarchy in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, including looting and arson, left at least 300 people dead and caused an estimated $2.8bn (£2.2bn) damage.
Prosecutors allege Zuma-Sambudla played a central role in stoking this.
This unique trial will be a chance for the state’s legal team to prove its mettle in successfully prosecuting cases relating to the 2021 unrest, but the accused sees it as an attempt to settle political scores with her father.
He is now an opposition leader after leaving the African National Congress (ANC) and joining a rival party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).
In recent years Zuma-Sambudla has emerged as the former president’s most stalwart supporter regularly seen by his side. She has also become an MK member of parliament.
In 2021, she was outraged by his incarceration and posted images from the looting. The allegation is that these praised what was happening and incited her legion of social media followers, some 100,000 at the time, to press on with the mayhem.
Zuma-Sambudla is accused of the incitement to commit terrorism under the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act. She is also accused of the incitement to commit public violence.
She has denied the charges, with her lawyer describing the state’s case as “weak”. She used a procedural hearing ahead of the trial to take shots at the prosecution, wearing a shirt ironically branded with the words “Modern Day Terrorist”.
Several dozen posts from July 2021 on what was then known as Twitter are at the heart of the state’s case against her.
In one tweet, she shared a film of a vehicle transporter ablaze and stacked with cars shot at Mooi Plaza, a tollgate near one of the towns in KwaZulu-Natal hardest hit by the violence. Along with the hashtag #FreeJacobZuma she wrote: “Mooi Plaza…We See You!!! Amandla”, along with three fist emojis.
“Amandla” means power in the Zulu language and was a well-known slogan in the resistance movement against white-minority apartheid rule.
In another tweet she shared a poster calling for the “shut down” of KwaZulu-Natal including “roads, factories, shops [and] government” until the former president was released.
She also included the Zulu word “azishe” which literally means “let it burn” but in slang can mean “let it start” or “let it proceed”.
The MP was born and raised in Mozambique, where her father was living in exile after spending a decade as a political prisoner in South Africa. She grew up with her twin brother Duduzane and was one of Zuma’s five children with his third wife Kate Mantsho – who took her own life in 2000.
Duduzile and Duduzane are arguably the most well-known of Zuma’s rumoured 20 children with several wives and former partners.
For several years, it was Duduzane who dominated headlines after his association with the controversial Gupta family came to light in the early 2010s.
That family was at the centre of the corruption allegations that plagued the Zuma presidency. The Guptas and Zuma have denied any wrongdoing.
Apart from her lavish wedding to businessman Lonwabo Sambudla in 2011, dubbed the wedding of the year at the time, Zuma-Sambudla kept out of the spotlight. She mostly focused on raising her two daughters and being a housewife, according to South Africa’s Daily Maverick news site.
She separated from her husband in 2017.
It was around that time that she was seen increasingly at her father’s side whenever he appeared in public, either in court or at political events – as a result, the spotlight turned towards her.
Zuma-Sambudla backed her father when he joined the MK party. Despite being a political novice, she now has a seat in parliament, after last year’s general election, and is an influential figure in the party despite holding no official position.
She was also appointed to the African Union’s Pan-African Parliament.
Aside from her controversial 2021 tweets, Zuma-Sambudla has become adept at using her social media accounts to show off her regimented fitness routine, provide glimpses into her private life and throw the occasional barb at her political opponents.
Her higher public profile now makes the case against her “very highly politicised with a strong public interest”, Willem Els, from think-tank the Institute for Security Studies, told the BBC.
Political science academic Prof Bheki Mngomezulu believes the case is politically motivated and a “way of fighting her father”.
“If she wasn’t the daughter of the former president, chances are these charges would have been dropped a long time ago,” he argued.
Both experts also questioned the delay in charging her.
The police’s elite corruption-busting agency, the Hawks, confirmed her arrest in January this year – nearly four years after the deadly protests.
“The fact that so few unrest-related cases have reached conviction also raises eyebrows around whether the prosecution is selective,” Mr Els said.
There have only been a handful of other cases relating to the violence in 2021 that have reached court.
The South African Human Rights Commission, in a statement released earlier this year, indicated that 66 possible cases were currently with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) but it faced challenges due to a “general lack of evidence… and hesitations by witnesses to co-operate or testify due to fears of reprisal and victimisation”.
In the Zuma-Sambudla case, the “high evidentiary bar” will be a big challenge for the prosecutors to show that it was not “just commentary or protest”.
“Prosecutors need to prove intent and causation that a post directly incited terrorism.”
He added that there were “few successful prosecutions” under the relevant legislation and that it was the first time in South Africa’s “legal history that someone has been charged specifically with incitement of terrorism via social media”.
NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga acknowledged in January that the case was “complex in nature” and prosecutors had to bring in external “experts on social media because [the police don’t] have an expert on social media”.
The NPA, however, would not have taken it this far if it was not confident with the case it had built, Mr Els added.
The MK has slammed the case against Zuma-Sambudla as a “social injustice”, while spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndlela dismissed the “trumped-up charges” as a “political ploy” and persecution.
Regardless of whether the prosecution is successful or not, the party could make hay from the case and present her as a martyr.
Meanwhile, it is likely to generate massive interest from the public and become part of the country’s continuing Zuma drama.
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