Former First Lady Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma has decided to sue the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks), Sowetan reports.
Ntuli-Zuma is suing the two institutions for malicious prosecution after they reportedly marked her as a suspect in the alleged poisoning of former President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma and Ntuli-Zuma, who was popularly known as MaNtuli, are now estranged.
NPA’s decision not to charge MaNtuli
The NPA recently decided that it will not charge Ntuli-Zuma. KwaZulu-Natal Director of Public Prosecutions Elaine Zungu said there’s no evidence that Zuma was poisoned.
However, former National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Shaun Abrahams insists that there was evidence.
Ntuli-Zuma’s legal action may now compel NPA to produce the evidence it used to mark her out as a suspect.
Speaking to Business Day, she said she had to take lie detector tests and endure hours of interrogation at the hands of the Hawks and intelligence officials.
‘Political pressure’
Ntuli-Zuma’s lawyer, Ulrich Roux, also claimed that NPA and the Hawks were under “severe political pressure” to prosecute her.
Ntuli-Zuma has always maintained her innocence. Other allegations she denied included having an affair with a bodyguard and contacting a foreign intelligence agent.
Former President Zuma has repeatedly claimed that foreign intelligence agencies and government were behind the alleged attempt on his life.
He has also claimed that they engineered several attempts to remove him from office. He believes his forced resignation in February 2018 was a culmination of these attempts.
On Thursday, Zuma claimed Western governments wanted him removed because he’s the one who came up with the idea of a BRICS bank.
He made the claim during his memorial lecture for the late Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in KwaZulu-Natal over on Thursday.