Africa-Press – South-Africa. The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is not concerned about possible unrest in the province after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) unanimously ruled that former president Jacob Zuma should return to jail.
The SCA ruled on Monday morning that the medical parole granted to Zuma by then-prisons boss Arthur Fraser was unlawful.
Speaking to News24 shortly after the court’s judgment, KwaZulu-Natal ANC secretary Bheki Mtolo said the provincial leadership did not fear a repeat of the acts of violence and unrest that gripped the province in July last year after Zuma’s incarceration.
“There are no concerns of any violence flaring up,” Mtolo added.
He said the provincial leadership was of the view that acting national correctional services commissioner Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale, who was appointed on 27 September 2021, would consider the period Zuma had spent on medical parole as time served.
“What it (the court ruling) does, is that while it declares the release of former president Zuma as unlawful, it opens a discretion to the commissioner (Thobakgale), and it brings back the sole power to him, and he alone has the discretion to release that prisoner (Zuma) any time if he deems the time he spent on parole as time served,” Mtolo added.
He said because the commissioner had gone to court to defend correctional services’ decision to grant Zuma medical parole, it was very likely that the commissioner would be aware that the court had given him the power to consider Zuma’s time spent on parole as time served.
“As you know, the department went to court to defend its decision, and this is likely not going to change. Zuma may therefore go back to the correctional facility at most for two hours, then he will be released,” said Mtolo.
The provincial secretary, however, conceded that the SCA judgment upheld the High Court’s decision in December 2021 that the department couldn’t release an inmate who had served less than 24 months on parole.
“It declared that decision as wrong and says that was an interference with the doctrine of separation of powers,” said Mtolo.
Gauteng High Court Judge Elias Matojane last year found that Zuma’s medical parole was unlawfu and that then-correctional services commissioner Arthur Fraser was not entitled to order his release.
Matojane found:
As such, the medical parole decision was replaced by a decision rejecting Zuma’s application for medical parole.
In Monday’s ruling, written by Judge Tati Makgoka, the SCA stressed that the effect of its order that Zuma had unlawfully been granted medical parole was that “Mr Zuma, in law, has not finished serving his sentence”.
“He must return to the correctional centre to do so. Whether the time spent by Mr Zuma on unlawfully granted medical parole should be taken into account in determining the remaining period of his incarceration, is not a matter for this court to decide,” the court found.
“It is a matter to be considered by the commissioner. If he is empowered by law to do so, the commissioner might take that period into account in determining any application or grounds for release.”
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