Former South African president Jacob Zuma reacts as he addresses a information convention in Johannesburg, South Africa, October 22, 2022. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 11 (Reuters) – South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, who spent solely two months of a 15-month sentence in jail in 2021, was granted a remission accredited by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday, avoiding a choice that would have despatched him again to jail.
Zuma was jailed in July 2021 for defying a court docket order to seem at an inquiry into corruption.
He was launched on medical parole after two months, however a court docket judgment upheld by the constitutional court docket discovered that call illegal. The head of South Africa’s prisons service was due this week to announce whether or not he would return to jail. Friday’s remission seems to make that call moot.
Zuma’s imprisonment in 2021 triggered violent protests wherein over 300 folks have been killed, and there have been fears that if he have been despatched again to jail there might be extra rioting.
South Africa’s nationwide commissioner of correctional companies, Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale, advised reporters that Zuma had appeared for about an hour on Friday morning on the Estcourt correctional facility in his house province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) the place he had been held in 2021.
He was subjected to “administrative processes” earlier than the remission took impact.
Prisons officers will preserve in touch with Zuma, as they do with different offenders launched underneath the remission course of, the commissioner added.
The nation’s largest opposition celebration, the Democratic Alliance, mentioned in an announcement that it was planning a authorized problem in opposition to the choice to grant Zuma the particular remission.
A spokesman for Zuma’s basis mentioned that Zuma was at house consulting his authorized workforce and {that a} assertion might be issued later.
Zuma, 81, retains a loyal following in KZN and inside elements of the governing African National Congress (ANC) celebration led by his successor Ramaphosa. He denies corruption allegations in opposition to him and has solid himself because the sufferer of a politically motivated witch-hunt by a faction within the ANC.
In a separate case nonetheless earlier than the courts Zuma has pleaded not responsible to fees together with corruption, fraud, racketeering and money-laundering over an arms deal within the 1990s.
Reporting by Carien du Plessis
Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya
Writing by Alexander Winning
Editing by Peter Graff
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