The Department of Correctional Services yesterday said it would challenge the SCA judgment that upheld former President Jacob Zuma’s medical parole as illegal.

It said it is convinced that another court may arrive at a different conclusion and is considering this course ‘on the basis of the interpretation and obligation of the Correctional Services Act and other relevant prescripts’.

The court said Zuma, ‘in law, has not finished serving his sentence’ and ‘he must return to the Estcourt Correctional Centre to do so’. However, it left the ball in the department’s court to determine a way forward with regards to the incarceration.

EWN reports that Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison last year by the Constitutional Court for contempt of court for refusing to appear before a commission of inquiry into serious corruption, mostly at state institutions.

However, he served less than two months before his release on medical parole.

Full EWN report

The court, in a judgment penned by Justice Tati Makgoka, ruled former prisons boss Arthur Fraser acted irrationally in granting Zuma medical parole in September 2021.

But a BusinessLIVE report notes that Zuma ‘differs with the court’s interpretation of the applicable legislation’ and considers his 15-month prison sentence fulfilled, his spokesperson, Mzwanele Manyi, said.

Manyi criticised the SCA’s decision, highlighting that Zuma’s doctor sought medical parole and Fraser granted it. 

‘Yet it is ... (former) President Zuma who must be punished for both the application and the decision.’

Manyi insisted Zuma’s time on medical parole completed his sentence and he cannot be ‘punished twice’ for the same offence.

‘To impose further imprisonment after the expiry of a jail term is totally unheard of and it is indeed a case of judicial overreach once again targeted at (former) President Zuma,’ he said.

Manyi added ‘we should all leave the matter in the hands of the law and our democratic institutions'.

Full BusinessLIVE report (subscription needed)