SOUTH AFRICA’S ZUMA TAKEN BACK TO PRISON AND RELEASED AGAIN WITHIN 2 HOURS

Fri 11 August 2023:

Former South African president Jacob Zuma received a remission from President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday, averting a decision that might have sent him back to prison. Zuma served only two months of a 15-month prison term in 2021.

Former South African President Jacob Zuma was taken back to prison on Friday after his parole was ruled invalid, only to be released again within two hours under a new program to reduce overcrowding in jails.

The move raised more questions over whether the 81-year-old is receiving preferential treatment to avoid serving out a 15-month sentence for contempt of court.

The remissions program was authorized by President Cyril Ramaphosa and made public for the first time Friday. While it aims to release more than 9,400 inmates from jail and put them under correctional supervision at home, Zuma appeared to be the first to benefit from it.

Zuma reported to the Estcourt Correctional Centre in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province at 6 a.m., ostensibly to serve the remaining 13 months of his sentence. But he was released some time after 7 a.m. when his remission was processed, said Makgothi Thobakgale, the acting national commissioner of the corrections department.

Zuma later arrived back at his rural Nkandla estate in a convoy of black SUVs, according to video broadcast by South African media.

South Africa’s national commissioner of correctional services, Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale, told reporters that Zuma had appeared for about an hour on Friday morning at the Estcourt correctional facility in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) where he had been held in 2021.

Opposition “Surprise”

“Surprise, surprise, he is the first beneficiary of a brand new policy,” said John Steenhuisen, the leader of South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. “This is a cynical manipulation of the justice system.”

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said President Ramaphosa had taken the decision to “remit the sentence” of his predecessor under the constitutional authority he has to remit the sentence of “any offender at any time.”

“The president’s decision is to remit sentences of offenders across the country. It is not a specific decision about former president Zuma. It’s about all the offenders across the country,” Lamola said.

Friday’s twist continued a two-year legal wrangle over Zuma’s sentence. He was sent to prison in July 2021 for defying a court order to testify at a corruption inquiry, but was released on medical parole having served just two months.

That medical parole was then ruled invalid, forcing South Africa’s Department of Corrections to make a new call on whether Zuma should go back to jail to serve the outstanding 13 months or whether his time on medical parole should count as him having served his sentence.

To avoid violent unrest

Instead, the corrections department went for neither. Including Zuma in the newly announced remissions program to ease prison congestion was viewed as a fudge by some to avoid the kind of violent unrest that erupted in South Africa the first time Zuma was sent to jail.

In 2021, more than 350 people died in some of the worst violence the country has seen since the final days of apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as rioting swept across Zuma’s home province of Kwa-Zulu Natal and the economic hub province of Gauteng.

South Africa had deployed the army to provide extra security in four provinces last month when the Constitutional Court ruled that Zuma’s early release on medical parole was improper, and security forces were on high alert again this week.

Zuma has recently returned from Russia where he received medical treatment for an undisclosed illness.

A spokesman for Zuma’s foundation said that Zuma was at home consulting his legal team and that a statement could be issued later.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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