FORMER SOUTH African President Jacob Zuma could be sent back to prison, a court has ruled.
The ruling at the Supreme Court this week, states that the decision to allow Mr Zuma to serve his 15-month sentence at home due to medical issues was unlawful.
Last year, the former President was given the jail term for a corruption case.
However, Mr Zuma failed to surrender to police and cooperate with the inquiry.
“On any conceivable basis, the commissioner’s decision was unlawful and unconstitutional. The high court was correct to set it aside,” the Supreme Court of Appeal judgement said.
The ruling also rejected the decision by correctional services that the sentence had been completed while the appeal was being heard.
“In other words, Mr Zuma, in law, has not finished serving his sentence. He must return to the Estcourt Correctional centre to do so,” the judgement read.
Last year, the former South African president was given the prison sentence following an investigation into allegations of corruption during his presidency between 2009 and 2018.
The 80-year-old former African National Congress (ANC) leader slammed judges and compared them to apartheid rulers after police were ordered to arrest him.
He launched several court actions to reverse the ruling and has said he would challenge the prison sentence.
A spokesperson from the Jacob Zuma Foundation, told Reuters that the ruling didn’t have anything to do with the actions of Mr Zuma.
“We think… he has served the 15 months that he was meant to serve in any event and importantly it is not President Zuma that applied for the medical parole… It is the government itself, the department of correctional services initiated the process and they saw it through,” he said.
The court did not decide on whether the time Mr Zuma has already spent on medical parole should be taken off his sentence.
The court said the decision will be made by the national commissioner of correctional services.
Last year, hundreds of Mr Zuma’s supporters formed a human shield outside his home to try and stop his arrest.
Many also called for the sentence to be completely dropped.
At the time, Mr Zuma remained defiant and told his supporters he is not afraid of being jailed, as he was sent to prison before by the apartheid regime.
“I am not afraid of going to jail. I went to prison fighting for freedom and rights and it looks like I will have to start from scratch and fight for freedom again,” Mr Zuma said in July last year.
“There is nobody who can come and take these rights away from me just because they think they understand the law. Those I fought for this freedom with would turn in their graves,” he added.
In 1963, Mr Zuma was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison on Robben Island for conspiring to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid government.
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The only crime the former President of South African, Mr Jacob Zuma, is guilty of is having African-skin, and ways of thinking and putting his rank-and-file African people as his priority.
All African leaders, who have placed the needs of African people as their priority, have angered the Caucasian Western European political and economic power structure.
The Caucasian Western European Economic Power Structure cannot and will not tolerate President Zuma placing the welfare of the people of South African; the South African people who voted President Zuma into office, above the economic; political and mineral needs of the Caucasian West.
The moment I noticed great hostility from the Caucasian Western Press against President Zuma, I instantly knew President Zuma was not being compliant as President Mandela was, and therefore, the Western political leaders and the Press would critically characterise and attack President Zuma.
My moto is simple.
If the western Press and Political Leaders likes and praises an African leader; that African leader is following policies that are great for the West, but bad for the Africans voters and citizens.
80-year-old Mr Zuma has given the best years of his life calling for justice for the African people of South Africa.
Mr Zuma should not be facing imprisonment because his policies upset the western power structure.