Judge Nkosinathi Chili of the Pietermaritzburg High Court has ordered that the corruption trial of former president Jacob Zuma and French arms manufacturer Thales proceed, regardless of any further legal challenges either side may file.
The ruling lands at a striking moment in a prosecution that has dragged on for more than two decades. Zuma and Thales face charges of corruption, fraud, and racketeering tied to a multibillion-rand defense procurement scandal from the early 2000s. Both defendants have repeatedly sought to block proceedings through successive interlocutory applications, a pattern Chili labeled “Stalingrad tactics” in his judgment, borrowing a phrase originally coined by Zuma’s late defense counsel, Kemp J Kemp SC. The term describes a strategy of filing wave after wave of legal challenges designed primarily to exhaust judicial resources and postpone the day of reckoning.
Chili was unambiguous about why that approach can no longer stand. He stressed that the court’s responsibility extends beyond the interests of the individual defendants, and that society itself has a stake in seeing justice administered fairly and without unnecessary delay, particularly in cases of constitutional significance. Public confidence in the judiciary, he reasoned, depends on the court’s willingness to resist deliberate obstruction.
The defendants had argued that the deaths of several key witnesses made a fair trial impossible. Chili rejected that reasoning outright. He said he could identify no cognizable harm or grave injustice that would result from allowing the trial to continue, and he pointed out that both Zuma and Thales retain the right to appeal under Section 316 of the Criminal Procedure Act, read alongside Section 35(3)(o) of the Constitution. They are not without remedies. They simply cannot use those remedies as an indefinite pause button.
By contrast, Chili warned that failing to intervene where a defense strategy is transparently designed to delay would undermine both the integrity of the court and the administration of justice itself. Without the court’s intervention, he wrote, there would be a likelihood of grave injustice, or the administration of justice being brought into disrepute.
His order directs the state, Zuma, and Thales to coordinate with the court’s registrar to establish suitable trial dates. Critically, the judgment stipulates that proceedings must commence regardless of any further interlocutory applications filed by either the defense or the prosecution. That language effectively closes the door on the delay tactics that have defined this case for years.
The ruling reflects a broader judicial impatience with protracted pre-trial maneuvering in high-profile matters. By explicitly dismissing the witness-death argument, Chili has signaled that defendants cannot postpone accountability through attrition alone. Individual rights remain important, but they must be weighed against the public interest in timely justice and the preservation of faith in legal institutions.
Comprehensive reporting on the judgment is available at https://mg.co.za/news/2026-05-14-zuma-and-thales-ordered-to-stop-stalingrad-tactics-in-arms-deal-trial/
The parties must now work with court administrators to schedule the substantive phase of a trial that has spent most of its life in procedural contests. Whether Zuma or Thales will test the limits of Chili’s order through fresh appeals is the question that hangs over the case as it finally moves toward the merits.