Now that the top court has dismissed Jacob Zuma's rescission application, the former president will next face legal onslaughts over the validity of his medical parole, which the prisons department announced on September 5.
Correctional services commissioner Arthur Fraser, a key Zuma ally, who led the secret services under the former president, made the announcement to release him on national television.
Fraser’s recent decision to release Zuma on medical parole spurred the DA, the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) and AfriForum to lodge cases contesting it. In disputing Fraser’s action, the trio have called into question the veracity of Zuma’s medical parole, both in terms of the claimed irregular process followed and the alleged invalid chronic medical grounds for release.
With Zuma’s rescission application now dismissed with costs, these medical parole cases will be in the spotlight, together with the criminal trial for alleged corruption, fraud, money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion in connection with the arms deal. French arms manufacturer Thales is Zuma’s co-accused in the matter and both have pleaded not guilty.
The Constitutional Court on Friday described Zuma’s rescission application as an “ill-fated attempt to butcher the legal process”. It dismissed his rescission application. He has sought to have an reversed an earlier apex court order against him, finding that he was guilty of contempt and must serve 15 months in prison.
“This is a hopeless case for rescission, and making a pronouncement on the interim relief sought would serve no purpose. In any event, the need for the relief sought has been superseded by events,” reads the judgment.
Justice Sisi Khampepe, who authored and handed down the decision that Zuma wanted rescinded, read out the order on Friday. In a replay of the ruling that found him guilty of contempt and liable for jail time, two justices did not agree with the decision.
“Rescission as an avenue of legal recourse remains open but only to those who advance meritorious and bona fide applications and who have not at every turn of the page sought to abuse judicial process,” said Khampepe.
The court’s ruling began with what might be read as a discrete reference to Zuma’s well-trodden and indefatigable legal tactic — the so-called Stalingrad litigation style — which has played out in a litany of cases involving the former president.
“Like all things in life, like the best of times and the worst of times, litigation must, at some point, come to an end. The Constitutional Court, as the highest court in the republic, is constitutionally enjoined to act as the final arbiter in litigation,” read the judgment.
The majority decision, from which Justice Chris Jafta and Justice Leona Theron again diverged, found Zuma’s attempt to have the previous court ruling rescinded did not meet the relevant requirements and was not in the interests of justice.
Jafta and Theron penned minority judgments in the matter the former president wanted rescinded.
In her judgment on Friday, Khampepe rejected the notion “that litigants can be allowed to butcher, of their own will, judicial process which in all other respects has been carried out with the utmost degree of regularity” by pleading the “absent victim”.
“If everything turned on actual presence, it would be entirely too easy for litigants to render void every judgment and order ever to be granted, by merely electing absentia [absence].”
Zuma had argued he was sentenced to prison time without trial in violation of his rights.
However, the majority of the top court’s judges found Zuma had been afforded an opportunity to participate in the proceedings that resulted in a guilty verdict against him and associated jail sentence; he, they ruled, elected to abstain.
“Elected absence like that of Mr Zuma constitutes more than litigious skulduggery, which does not have the effect of turning a competently granted order into one erroneously granted,” said Khampepe.
Pending the decision Khampepe handed down on Friday, Zuma had asked for interim release from Estcourt prison, where he began serving his 15-month jail term on July 7. After one month in a secluded wing of the prison and another month in custody at an undisclosed hospital, Zuma was granted medical parole. He had, by that time, spent two of 15 months in custody.
“The predicament in which he now finds himself is not the making of the courts nor does the solution lie with the courts,” Khampepe said when handing down judgment.
Read the full apex court judgment dismissing Zuma’s rescission application below. The minority judgments of Jafta and Theron are included.
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