A court in South Africa on Monday ruled that former President Jacob Zuma’s release from jail on medical parole was unlawful, ordering him to return to prison to complete his sentence. The court said that Mr. Zuma, who is serving a 15-year sentence for graft, had not submitted sufficient evidence to support his claim that he was too ill to remain in prison. The ruling is a setback for Mr. Zuma, who has been trying to secure his release on health grounds. It is not clear whether he will be able to return to prison, as he has been hospitalised for several weeks.
Last year, Zuma was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment after ignoring a court order to testify at a government inquiry into widespread corruption during his near-decade as president, a tenure that ended in 2018 when incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa replaced him.
In September 2021, Zuma was released on medical parole after serving a fraction of the sentence. But in December, the high court set aside the parole decision and ordered him to return to jail.
Zuma appealed that ruling and judgment was delivered on Monday, a month after the department of correctional services said his prison sentence had ended.
“In other words, Mr Zuma, in law, has not finished serving his sentence. He must return to the Escourt Correctional centre to do so,” the Supreme Court of Appeal’s judgment read.
The court took issue with the department’s claim that Zuma’s sentence had ended while the appeal was still being heard.
It also found that the decision by the former national commissioner of correctional services to grant Zuma medical parole against the advice of the Medical Parole Advisory Board, a specialist body, was unlawful.
“On any conceivable basis, the commissioner’s decision was unlawful and unconstitutional. The high court was correct to set it aside,” the judgment said.
The Jacob Zuma Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the department of correctional services said the judgment was being studied and it would likely respond later.
The Jacob Zuma Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the department of correctional services said the judgment was being studied and it would likely respond later.
The judgment, which was handed down by the High Court in Pietermaritzburg on Friday, found that Zuma had failed to disclose his financial interests in accordance with the executive ethics code.
This is not the first time that Zuma has been found to have breached the ethics code – in 2016, the Constitutional Court found that he had failed to comply with the code when he refused to disclose the source of funding for the upgrades to his private home in Nkandla.