Former president Jacob Zuma's daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla has been released on warning by the Durban Magistrate's Court. The NPA said she meets the exceptional circumstances required for bail but no bail amount was set. Zuma-Sambudla handed herself over to the police this morning after being charged with terrorism and related activities over the 2021 July unrest.

NOT A FLIGHT RISK

Speaking to the media outside court, NPA spokesperson, Advocate Mthunzi Mhaga, said that they were not opposed to the bail of Zuma-Sambudla, stating that she is not a flight risk. "The accused is not a flight risk and at this point, the investigation has been completed and the matter will be transferred to the high court, so we are comfortable with that decision."

Touching on the issue of bringing the charges to the accused three years after the incident, Mhaga said: "We must try and disabuse ourselves of this tendency of viewing or arguing legal issues that are still to be ventilated in a trial from an uninformed emotional and political perspective."

He explained that the delay of three years before the matter was brought to court had to do with the complexity of her charge. "You will understand that she is charged in terms of the protection of constitutional democracy against Terrorism and Related Activities Act. It is the first time that the NPA is charging a person based on content posted on X, previously known as Twitter. For content that we consider to be amounting to incitement to commit terrorism, it's a unique case, complex in the sense that reliance on the investigation and evidence is based on a social media post."

A DIFFERENT KIND OF INVESTIGATION

Mhaga explained that it was a technical investigation. "It is an investigation that some of the parts of the process had to be outsourced in terms of experts on social media because SAPS doesn't have such resources. Secondly, there is an issue of emojis and images that need to be interpreted by an expert in that field. There are procurement processes that need to be followed to procure that investigation. Therefore, the process of investigating this matter took longer than we had anticipated and that is why it took us three years to bring it before the court. We also needed to check if the evidence was authentic and admissible in court." The matter will be back in court on 20 March.