THE MEDIA HAS DROPPED THE BALL IN REMAINING SILENT ON ZUMA’S FRAUDULENT PRISON RELEASE
I cannot understand why the South African media are not making a big, big deal about the endless judicial silence on Jacob Zuma’s fraudulent release from prison on medical grounds. It was found by a court to be fraudulent, and was of course appealed, but that was ages ago. Since then, nothing. Why?
There are only a few possibilities:
1) The court considering the appeal is entirely incompetent. If this is the case then the media should be crawling all over this.
2) The court is so swamped that they have not been able to get to this case. But there is such a thing as prioritisation. This is an extremely high priority case for the people of South Africa. I’ve also seen vague references to “administrative problems” at the court causing the delay. Rubbish. Why is the media not chasing this down?
3) The court has deliberately delayed reviewing the case so that Zuma’s term can be fully served – as it now has been. Now, the court can find that his release was fraudulent, but because his time has been fully served, there is no basis on which to send him back to prison. I believe that this is what will happen. When this is the ruling, will the media go into attack mode?
4) Meetings were held in dark rooms between politicians and the judiciary, who agreed that sending Zuma back to prison, while this is the correct finding, will lead to widespread rioting and criminal damage. Therefore it is better to let time pass, get through the December leadership election and then quietly slip the ruling into the public domain, perhaps once Zuma is dead. This would be giving in to blackmail on a massive scale, and it would completely shred any notion of the independence of the judiciary.
Regardless of the reason for the delay in finalising the appeal, the independent media have not served the people of South Africa on this one. Alan