In a historic ruling, South Africa’s top court on Tuesday handed former South African president Jacob Zuma a 15-month jail term for “egregious” contempt of court after he refused to appear before graft investigators.
Zuma was told to turn himself in within five days, or police would be ordered to arrest him and take him to jail.
The scathing ruling sets a precedent for South Africa — and a benchmark for the continent — by jailing a former head of state for failing to respond to a corruption probe.
Photo: Reuters
“Zuma is guilty of the crime of contempt of court,” South African Constitutional Court Judge Sisi Khampepe said.
“No person is above the law,” she said, decrying Zuma’s “egregious affront on judicial integrity, the rule of law and the constitution.”
Zuma, 79, is accused of enabling the plunder of state coffers during his nine years in office, which ended calamitously in February 2018 when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) forced him out.
Before he left office, he responded to mounting pressure and set up an investigative commission, headed by South African Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
The commission hailed the verdict, saying that the sentence sends an “important message” that there are “serious consequences for anyone who defies summonses and orders of courts ... no matter what the person’s status is in society.”
The panel has encountered years of resistance from Zuma.
He only testified once, in July 2019, before staging a walkout days later and accusing Zondo of bias.
He then ignored several invitations to reappear, in some cases citing medical reasons and preparations for another corruption trial.
He presented himself again briefly in November last year, but left before questioning and then ignored a court order to return to face the panel, forcing an exasperated Zondo to ask the court to intervene for contempt.
“This kind of recalcitrance and defiance is unlawful and will be punished,” Khampepe said.
“I am left with no option, but to commit Mr Zuma to imprisonment, with the hope that doing so sends an unequivocal message... The rule of law and the administration of justice prevails,” she added.
Khampepe said that Zuma, as a former South African president, was aware of the law, yet placed himself “in blatant violation” of a court order, before declaring “an unsuspended” 15-month prison sentence.
She ordered Zuma to hand himself over to the police in Johannesburg or in Nkandla, a rural town in southeastern Kwa-Zulu Natal Province where he has a home, within five calendar days.
If he fails to turn himself in, police “must within three calendar days of the expiry stipulated of the period” take all steps to make sure he “is delivered to a correctional center” to start the sentence, she said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver