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Former South African president Jacob Zuma appears at a hearing in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Nov. 17, 2020.Themba Hadebe/The Associated Press

Jacob Zuma, the former South African president whose rule was tainted by years of scandals, has vowed to go to prison rather than testify at an official inquiry on state corruption.

“I do not fear being arrested,” Mr. Zuma said in a defiant statement Monday. “I do not fear being convicted, nor do I fear being incarcerated.”

The inquiry has heard more than two years of testimony about corruption and wrongdoing in the Zuma government – including shocking evidence last week that his appointees in the state spy agency had set up a private unit to serve Mr. Zuma’s personal interests by bribing journalists and judges, planting stories in the media, imprisoning one of his wives and funnelling monthly payments to Mr. Zuma himself.

He is now facing the threat of criminal charges for refusing to testify at the inquiry. South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, ruled last week that Mr. Zuma’s conduct was “reprehensible” and “antithetical to our constitutional order.”

His actions are illegal and have “seriously undermined” the work of the public inquiry, the court said. “In our system, no one is above the law.”

Mr. Zuma, who walked out of the inquiry in November, in violation of its orders, had been summoned again to testify from Feb. 15 to 19. But in his statement Monday, he said he was being victimized and unfairly targeted.

He has dodged the inquiry for more than a year, ignoring its requests to testify and then claiming to be too ill to attend. In its ruling, the Constitutional Court said the inquiry has been too deferential to Mr. Zuma, giving him “favourable treatment” by allowing him to avoid its requests to testify.

Most recently, Mr. Zuma has argued that the head of the inquiry, deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, should recuse himself because of a conflict of interest – allegedly because Mr. Zondo once had a relationship in the 1990s with a woman whose sister later married Mr. Zuma in 2010. The former president repeated this charge Monday, saying they had “a history of personal relations” – an allegation Mr. Zondo has strongly denied.

Mr. Zuma has not explained why the alleged conflict of interest did not prevent him from appointing Justice Zondo to the Constitutional Court in 2012 and then promoting him to the rank of deputy Chief Justice in 2017.

His latest refusal to testify is failing to generate much sympathy in South Africa. “Former president Zuma is really desperate not to have to answer questions about his alleged crimes,” said Pierre de Vos, a legal commentator and constitutional law expert, in a tweet Monday. “What is he hiding?”

In the latest testimony to the corruption inquiry, witnesses last week described a series of illicit and secret operations by a private unit set up by Zuma loyalists within the State Security Agency – the national spy agency.

The unit, funded by millions of dollars from the state budget, allegedly funnelled as much as $380,000 in monthly cash payments to Mr. Zuma from 2015 to 2017. The payments, in a scheme code-named “Project Commitment,” were channelled through a close Zuma ally, former state security minister David Mahlobo, who remains a deputy minister in the current government.

The identities of two of the witnesses were kept confidential by the inquiry because they are still members of the spy agency.

Witnesses said the unit also spent as much as $150,000 monthly on a special toxicology team to check the food and bedsheets of Mr. Zuma, who was famously fearful of being poisoned.

Loyiso Jafta, the acting director-general of the spy agency, testified that the unit also secretly spent money on a “safe house” where one of Mr. Zuma’s several wives, Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, was detained against her will for several months on suspicion of having poisoned Mr. Zuma. This was code-named “Project Tin Roof.”

Testimony also described “Project Justice,” which sought to influence judges to give rulings favourable to Mr. Zuma, and “Project Wave,” which made payments to journalists and media outlets, including $1.7-million to the African News Agency, owned by one-time Zuma ally Iqbal Surve, for positive stories about the Zuma government.

The news agency confirmed that allegation last week.

In addition to the allegations at the public inquiry, Mr. Zuma is also facing criminal charges of corruption in a separate case involving payments from weapon manufacturers in a multibillion-dollar South African arms deal. The case has been delayed for more than a decade by legal tactics by Mr. Zuma and his supporters.

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