Former President Jacob Zuma is adamant that ex-prisons boss Arthur Fraser saved his life by granting him medical parole – but if Fraser had been wrong to do so, he wants the Constitutional Court to rule he shouldn’t go back to jail.

‘Faced with a possibility that I faced death itself while in prison, it could never be unreasonable or irrational for the commissioner to have granted me medical parole,’ Zuma states in papers filed at the apex court.

‘Bearing in mind that my incarceration was in the middle of a deadly pandemic in which people in my age and medical condition faced a certain death, the commissioner's decision, in our constitutional context, should have been applauded as exemplary leadership that is required under our Constitution.’ 

News24 reports that Fraser’s decision to grant Zuma medical parole has now been found to be invalid by both the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) and the SCA – which confirmed in November last year that the former President should return to jail.

Zuma is aggrieved at this ruling, as well as the appeal court’s order that the National Commissioner of Correctional Services, if he was so empowered, could then decide whether his time on unlawful medical parole should be considered ‘in determining any application or grounds for release’.

According to Zuma, ‘such a finding is erroneous in the extreme and constitutes a gross misdirection’.

Full News24 report