Former South African President set for prison return

The former President was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment in June 2021 by the Constitutional Court for contempt after he breached its order to obey the summons of the State Capture Commission.

After serving less than two months, he was granted medical parole by Arthur Fraser, the former National Commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services, despite not being recommended for it by the medical parole board. The decision was immediately challenged in the Pretoria High Court by the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), and rights lobby organization groups, the Helen Suzman Foundation and AfriForum.

The Pretoria High Court in December 2021 then set aside Fraser’s decision, and in November last year, the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the High Court order which declared that the time Zuma spent out on medical parole should not be counted as part of the prison sentence.

“This obviously now closes the door, we hope, for any future abuse of medical parole by connected ANC (governing party) individuals to escape accountability for their actions and misdeeds. I think it’s going to set a very, very important precedent now around medical parole to ensure it won’t be abused going forward.

I do think it is a victory for the principle of equality before the law, where it doesn’t matter if you are an ordinary citizen or a former President, or even a sitting President, that the same set of laws, the same set of rules and the same set of standards must be applied to everybody equally, regardless of their station in life,” said DA leader, John Steenhuisen

However, the Jacob Zuma Foundation’s spokesperson, Mzwanele Manyi, said the former President was not going back to prison.

“Nowhere in the SCA Judgment is H.E Pres Zuma ordered to go back to prison. For the record, the media reports that the ConCourt ordered Pres Zuma to go back to prison are malicious, misleading and hateful.

The SCA, whose decision has been upheld by the ConCourt, actually refused to grant that ridiculous order and referred the issue to the DCS to decide,” said Manyi.