NEWS: South Africa
South Africa’s High Court keeps former President Jacob Zuma in jail.

Zuma was jailed in July after refus­ing to tes­ti­fy before cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tors, a move that sparked vio­lent protests killing more than 350.

Judge K.E. Moto­jane ruled that the med­ical parole grant­ed to Zuma last Sep­tem­ber was illegal.

He ruled that none of the peri­ods that Zuma was on med­ical parole would count as time served for ear­ly release over his 15-month sen­tence for con­tempt of court.

Zuma was jailed on July 11 for fail­ing to appear as ordered before the State Cap­ture Com­mis­sion of Inquiry, which is South African cor­rup­tion slang.

Today’s rul­ing is a legal slap in the face for for­mer cor­rec­tion­al chief Arthur Fras­er who released Zuma on med­ical parole, over­turn­ing the med­ical parole board that found Zuma was not eli­gi­ble for a ear­ly release for health reasons.

Zuma and Fras­er are ordered to pay the costs of the action brought by the Helen Suz­man Foun­da­tion, the right-wing lob­by group Afrifo­rum and the offi­cial oppo­si­tion par­ty the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Alliance.

AD Chief John Steen­huisen said: “We wel­come the imme­di­ate revo­ca­tion of Mr. Zuma’s med­ical parole, his return to cor­rec­tion­al cus­tody to serve the remain­der of his sen­tence. , the pro­hi­bi­tion against count­ing time spent on med­ical parole as time served and that he and Mr. Arthur Fras­er pay all court costs. ”

“If we allow these to slip, we will seri­ous­ly weak­en the foun­da­tions of our con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy. We are great­ly encour­aged by the firm and unam­bigu­ous posi­tion tak­en by Judge KE Mato­jane in this regard, ”he said.

The Suz­man Foun­da­tion said in its tweet that the rul­ing is a vic­to­ry for the rule of law, although it is con­fi­dent that Zuma will appeal the judgment.

Zuma sup­port­ers, mean­while, have vowed to put their bod­ies at risk to pre­vent the for­mer pres­i­dent from return­ing to prison.

The ANC played a direct role in the deci­sion, he said on Twit­ter that cor­rec­tions should release a devel­op­ment state­ment and are await­ing that statement.

The move raised secu­ri­ty con­cerns as protests against Zuma’s impris­on­ment in July, which are wide­ly believed to have result­ed in spo­radic oppor­tunis­tic loot­ing that ran­sacked build­ings and caused bil­lions of rand in loss­es to com­pa­nies in the com­mer­cial cap­i­tal Johan­nes­burg and the home province of Zuma, KwaZu­lu / Natal.

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