APA-Johannesburg (South Africa) South Africa’s Constitutional Court has ordered that former president Jacob Zuma should return to prison to serve the remainder of his 15-month sentence for contempt of court after he defied a 2021 order to appear before a panel that probed high-level corruption during his administration.
The court on Thursday upheld a previous ruling by the High Court for the former head of state to return to prison to serve the remaining 13 months of his sentence.
The application had been brought on behalf of the national commissioner of Correctional Services who had previously been found to have erred in releasing Zuma after just two months of imprisonment.
The commissioner had sought leave to appeal against a November 2022 rejection of the application by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
The Constitutional Court ruled that there are “no reasonable prospects of success” in appealing against the ruling.
Zuma served only eight weeks of his fifteen-month sentence before being released in September 2021 on medical parole.
The latest ruling comes a few days before the second anniversary of deadly riots sparked by Zuma’s incarceration in July 2021.
The former president’s supporters took to the streets in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces to protest the imprisonment and looted businesses in the two regions. At least 300 people were killed during the riots, according to the police.
JN/APA