Shivangi Prakash-
Former President Jacob Zuma’s appeal against his 15-month prison sentence for failing to attend an inquiry into suspected corruption during his reign has been accepted by South Africa’s highest court, giving him a respite from turning himself into the police on Sunday to fulfil the sentence.
Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Constitutional Court on Tuesday after persistently refusing to testify before the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
Zuma, 79, is accused of allowing state funds to be stolen over his nearly nine-year tenure as president, from 2009 to 2018.
The court had given him till Sunday to surrender himself to the police and begin serving his sentence.
The court announced on Saturday that it will consider Zuma’s motion to have the ruling reversed, thus giving him a one-week reprieve.
According to insiders, Zuma requested the court to overturn its decision, citing his age, undisclosed medical issues, and the approaching third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as threats to his life.
“I am advised that before I walk through the prison doors to serve my sentence as the first direct prisoner of the Constitutional Court under our constitutional democracy, it will not be futile to make one last attempt to invite the Constitutional Court to relook its decision,” Independent Online, a news website, quoted Zuma’s plea as saying.
The court’s ruling comes amid mounting tensions in the country, with scores of African National Congress (ANC) military veterans and other supporters gathering outside Zuma”s homestead in rural Nkandla in the last three days, with some threatening violence if he is brought to prison.
Mzwanele Manyi, Zuma’s spokesperson, said the court’s decision to hear Zuma’s plea was positive for public confidence in the judiciary’s independence since it demonstrated that the court was willing to listen to the reasons for it.
According to political observers, Zuma might have raised these arguments if he had responded to the court’s summons to appear in person.
Zuma is also embroiled in a separate legal battle over a $2 billion armaments contract struck when he was vice president in 1999.