Without having spent any time in a cell, former President Jacob Zuma has been granted medical parole, approved by his associate and former spy boss, Arthur Fraser. 

The 79-year-old is supposed to be serving a 15-month sentence for refusing to testify before the State Capture Inquiry, says a Business Day report. He was jailed on 8 July 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.

The nature of Zuma’s illness has not been specified.

‘He must comply with a specific set of conditions and will be subjected to supervision until his sentence expires,’ spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said, adding 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.

Full Business Day report

DA Leader John Steenhuisen is one who doesn’t trust the system, saying last night it made a mockery of the justice system.

He said following the granting of unlawful medical parole to Schabir Shaik in 2009, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services unanimously supported the amendment of section 79 of the Act, to stipulate that the Minister must establish a medical advisory board to provide an independent medical report to the National Commissioner and parole board, or the Minister, as the case may be, in addition to a medical report.

‘A report on the health status of any prisoner must be subject to the recommendation by an independent board to confirm, in truth, that a prisoner is indeed deserving of medical parole. Given that Jacob Zuma publicly refused to be examined by an independent medical professional, let alone a medical advisory board, this decision is a violation of the Act and therefore unlawful,’ Steenhuisen is quoted as saying in an IoL report.

He also pointed out the parole was granted by someone who has close ties with Zuma.

‘It should also be noted that this medical parole was granted to Zuma by his former spy boss, Arthur Fraser – a man allegedly deeply implicated in the corruption of the State Security Agency and accused of running an illegal parallel intelligence structure.'

He said he would be submitting an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act for the records of the parole board, to establish what criteria the Department of Correctional Services used to determine Zuma’s eligibility for medical parole.

‘I will also request that the Justice & Correctional Services Committee summon Arthur Fraser to explain to Parliament his decision to grant this medical parole in direct contravention of the Correctional Matters Amendment Act,’ Steenhuisen said.

Full report on the IoL site