Zuma Decries SCA Parole Ruling

Former president Jacob Zuma has described the Supreme Court of Appeal’s (SCA) ruling on his release from prison as “erroneous in the extreme”, and as “a gross misdirection”.

This is in the papers now filed with the Constitutional Court in Zuma’s bid to intervene in the National Commissioner of Correctional Services’ application for leave to appeal the Supreme Court of Appeal’s ruling on his medical parole.

In December 2021, the high court in Pretoria ruled that former commissioner Arthur Fraser’s decision to release Zuma from prison on medical parole was unlawful, and that the former president needed to return to prison to serve out the remainder of his sentence.

And in November, the SCA, by and large, upheld that ruling, finding that Zuma did not, in law, complete his sentence.

However, it said that questions of how an inmate served his sentence, and when and how he qualified for parole, were for the Department of Correctional Services and the commissioner to decide.

But Zuma said that the ruling left uncertainty.

The former president was adamant that there was nothing for the commissioner to consider in his case.

He insisted that his official release date, 7 October 2022, “has come and gone”.

Zuma argued that neither the commissioner, nor the SCA, could “ever have the powers to wish away the fact that, legally speaking, [his] entire sentence has been served”.