Without spending a single night in a jail cell, former president Jacob Zuma has been granted medical parole and is expected to be released soon. The 79-year-old is supposed to be serving a 15-month sentence for refusing to testify before the state capture inquiry.
He was jailed on July 8 after being found to be in contempt of an order of the Constitutional Court and spent most of the next two months in the hospital wing of the Estcourt Correctional Services Centre before being transferred to a medical facility for what was supposed to be a routine check-up but turned into an extended stay.
In a separate corruption case against Zuma, his legal team has been reluctant to allow the National Prosecuting Authority to conduct its own medical assessment of his condition.
The nature of Zuma’s illness has not been specified, but a statement from the department of correctional services reads that he would complete his sentence in the community under supervision.
“He must comply with a specific set of conditions and will be subjected to supervision until his sentence expires,” spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said.
In August, prison authorities said Zuma underwent surgery and was in hospital awaiting further operations. He handed himself in to police in July — his jailing unprecedented for a former president in SA, sparking violence and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
Zuma was forced out of high office by his own party in 2018 after it lost electoral support in the 2016 local government elections. The ANC ascribed this to the corruption that engulfed the party and nation under his leadership. At the time of his jailing this year the ANC rejected calls by his supporters to intervene politically and it allowed the law to take its course.
Nxumalo said Zuma will be released when doctors discharge him from hospital.
He added that when prisoners are eligible for medical parole according to the relevant sections in the Correctional Services Act “it’s an inmate whose daily activity is now limited and is now someone who is unable to afford self-care, therefore that person has to be on placement on medical grounds”.
He confirmed that the provision applies to inmates who are terminally ill, but would not be drawn on the specifics of Zuma’s condition. Nxumalo said the department received more than one medical report suggesting medical parole had to be looked into.
When an inmate is physically incapacitated or suffering from a terminal illness, they are legally eligible for medical parole, he said. “You will have other people who will, after [they] receive medical care, continue to survive,” Nxumalo said, but that survival should not be used as grounds to mistrust the system.
The Jacob Zuma Foundation welcomed the decision to release its patron.
In August it said that the Constitutional Court’s refusal to release Zuma pending its decision on whether to rescind the imprisonment order was an “egregious violation”.
With Erin Bates
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