JACOB ZUMA LOSES BID ...TO OVERTURN JAIL SENTENCE
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's top court has ruled that the former President Jacob Zuma has failed in his bid to have his 15-month jail sentence overturned.
In July, Mr Zuma asked the constitutional court to revoke the sentence, arguing that it was excessive and that prison would endanger his health and life.
Mr Zuma was jailed for failing to testify at a corruption inquiry. He denies wrongdoing.
He is in hospital recuperating from an undisclosed illness, and will serve the remainder of his 15-month prison sentence at home.
But the Jacob Zuma Foundation has, through its spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi, called the Constitutional Court's decision a miscarriage of justice.
Speaking to News24 minutes after the judgment, Manyi said the foundation was gravely disappointed by the judgment and did not accept it as it amounted to a form of
The Constitutional Court dismissed the application with costs, saying there was "nothing in Zuma's case that can be construed as exceptional."
Delivering the judgment, Justice Sisi Khampepe said the "predicament in which he (Zum) now finds himself is not the making of the courts, nor does the solution lie with the courts."
She added that Zuma had brought the application "only now that the shoe pinches," yet he had refused to participate in the contempt of court proceedings.
"Instead of furnishing the courts with mitigating factors, Zuma squandered the opportunity," said Khampepe, referring to a letter
Chief Justice
Mogoeng
Mogoeng wrote inviting the former president to present facts in mitigation of possible sentence during his contempt of court
case.