South Africa’s Constitutional Court has agreed to hear former president Jacob Zuma’s application to have the order against him, to spend 15 months in prison, rescinded for contempt of court on 12 July, APA can report.
The apex court on Tuesday ordered Zuma to be imprisoned for ignoring its order to testify at the Commission of Inquiry into state capture as a witness.
The former president requested the highest court to withdraw and amend the order that he be imprisoned, his defence team said.
Should the application be successful, Zuma would need to meet the requirements of the court rules he was relying upon for his application, according to lawyer Ulrich Roux.
Roux said: “You need to demonstrate that you, as the applicant, were not given a fair opportunity to state your case prior to an order being made.”
“Or, there was a grave error made in the interpretation of the law when handing down the ordering and, accordingly, the order handed down should be rescinded,” he said.
Zuma claimed in the application that “he was summarily sentenced to direct imprisonment without being given an opportunity to argue in mitigation after conviction. But this is disingenuous,” Roux said.
He said the Constitutional Court requested him in April to file an affidavit in mitigation of sentence, in the event he was found guilty of contempt of court.
Instead, he sent a scathing 22-page letter to the Chief Justice in which he referred to “the bench’s political gimmicks,” the lawyer added.
NM/as/APA