Former President Jacob Zuma has told the Constitutional Court that a ruling that orders him to pay back R28.9m in taxpayer funds spent on his corruption trial could result in ‘potential injustice … of the utmost severity’.

While the SCA found in 2021 that Zuma used taxpayers’ money to litigate against the NPA on a ‘luxurious’ scale, he maintained he was a ‘victim’ of the state’s illegal decision to provide those funds.

According to Zuma, he ‘was entitled to a lawful decision from the state regarding its obligations to fund my legal representation’.

‘The state violated its constitutional duty to act lawfully and to give me fair administrative action as required by section 33 of the Constitution and Paja’ he said. ‘The consequences of the state’s failure to comply with its constitutional obligations must rest with the state – not with the innocent citizen who relied on the state to act lawfully.’

According to News24, Zuma insisted the officials who decided to grant his request for state funding of his corruption trial costs should be held liable for the millions of rands he had spent on a plethora of ultimately futile legal challenges to that prosecution.

Those arguments failed to convince the SCA, which last month dismissed Zuma’s bid to appeal the legal fees repayment ruling made by Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) Judge Anthony Millar in October 2025 as having ‘no reasonable prospect of success’. 

Zuma has now launched a last-ditch appeal to the Constitutional Court to block the State Attorney from acting on court orders that it take all reasonable steps to recover the millions in state funds spent on his so-called ‘Stalingrad’ litigation against the NPA.

Prosecutors charged Zuma with arms deal-linked corruption 21 years ago, but – largely because of his endless failed legal challenges to every aspect of that prosecution – the state has yet to start leading evidence against him.

In an attempt to stop this, the NPA successfully applied for orders that would enable Zuma’s trial to proceed, regardless of the appeals he had launched, reports News24.

Unsurprisingly, he is now trying to appeal that ruling.

In his separate appeal against the legal fees repayment ruling, he insisted the state could only seek repayment of his legal fees if and when he was found guilty and shown to have acted in his own interests in respect of the corruption he was accused of.

‘None of these conditions have occurred. My criminal trial remains ongoing. The state’s right to claim repayment has not yet accrued and may never accrue in the event of my acquittal,’ Zuma stated in an argument that ignored the fact the courts have already found he was never entitled to state funding of his legal costs.

Following litigation launched by the DA and the EFF, a full Bench of the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) and the SCA both found that Zuma was not entitled to state legal funding of his trial costs under the provisions of the State Attorney Act – precisely because he was acting in his ‘personal capacity’ when he allegedly committed the corruption and other crimes he is accused of.

In an appeal filed at the Constitutional Court last week, Zuma continued to insist the court ruling that resulted in the repayment order against him ‘did not direct the state attorney to recover costs from me’.

Instead, he said, it ‘gave the state broad discretion to “take all necessary steps ... to recover the amounts paid by the state”’.

The State Attorney and DA are expected to file responses in the coming weeks.

Full News24 report