APA-Durban (South Africa) South African security forces are on high alert as the country awaits Thursday’s announcement by Correctional Services Commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale on whether former president Jacob Zuma must return to prison or remains free on parole.
The Supreme Court of Appeal last month upheld a November 2021 High Court ruling that then Commissioner of Correctional Services Arthur Fraser had erred in granting Zuma parole on medical grounds two months into a 15-month sentence for contempt of court.
The SCA, however, said Thobakgale, who replaced Fraser in 2021, would need to decide on “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.”
“It is a matter to be considered by the commissioner,” the court ruled in July.
The Department of Correctional Services announced last week that “it has received representations from relevant parties on the incarceration term for the former president, Mr Jacob Zuma. Commissioner Thobakgale is to make his decision on or before 10 August 2023 and it will be communicated publicly.”
According to media reports monitored here on Thursday, the South African Police Service and South African National Defence Force have deployed personnel to Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal and other potential hotspots around South Africa and are “ready for any eventuality”.
The July 2021 incarceration of the former president led to a week-long orgy of violence, looting and arson in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng province that claimed over 300 people and cost the economy billions of dollars in damage.
JN/APA