Central SA
SCA judgment over Zuma incoherent - spokesperson─── LUCKY NKUYANE 11:17 Tue, 22 Nov 2022
The spokesperson for the Jacob Zuma Foundation has described the Bloemfontein-based Supreme Court of Appeal’s (SCA) unanimous ruling over the medical parole of the former president as incoherent.
On Monday 21 November 2022, SCA’s Justice Tati Makgoka read an order which upheld the North Gauteng High Court’s judgment that the decision by the former Department of Correctional Services (DSC) Head, Arthur Fraser, to grant former president Jacob Zuma parole was invalid in terms of the law. Justice Makgoka dismissed Zuma’s application for leave to appeal to the North Gauteng High Court.
He said Fraser, who granted Zuma parole after he served less than two months of his 15 months jail term, should not have overruled the department’s medical advisory board.
The spokesperson for the foundation, Mzwanele Manyi, says he has studied the SCA judgment in his personal capacity and he concluded that this judgment completely ignores the fact that Fraser used a medical report as a basis for his decision.
In August 2022, Manyi told OFM News that nothing prohibited Fraser to grant Zuma medical parole despite the medical parole advisory board's advice and recommendation that Zuma was not eligible for parole.
ALSO READ: Foundation maintains Frazer was right to grant Zuma parole
He said the board bears no legislative powers but mere regulation powers. Manyi added that, in terms of the Correctional Services Act, Frazer, who was the commissioner, could and had the right to overlook the recommendations by the board and grant Zuma parole after he was given a 15-month prison sentence for being in contempt of court.
“When we got to the court, SC Mpofu had to do a workshop and clarify that first and foremost there is no parole board to talk about. We must talk about the structure that made the recommendation, which is not a parole board but a medical parole advisory board. “So when you are an advisor you don’t have final authority, anyway, in life. Once you are an advisor you remain an advisor, you give advice and the principal will still decide,” Manyi added.
In 2021, Constitutional Court judges sentenced Zuma to 15 months imprisonment, after he failed to appear before the State Capture Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
Justice Sisi Khampepe found him guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him as such.
However, Zuma denied that he did not want to appear before the commission. He maintained that he merely wanted Zondo to recuse himself, given the alleged history between the two.
