S Africa’s ex-president Zuma wakes up in jail
Many hail incarceration as watershed moment that could strengthen rule of law, writes Susan Njanji
After days of drama and suspense before handing himself in, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma began a 15-month sentence for contempt yesterday, after spending his first night in jail.
The former prisoner of the apartheid regime had kept the country on tenterhooks by trying all legal avenues to evade jail, but Zuma became an inmate once again shortly after midnight.
It is the first time a former president has been jailed in post-apartheid South Africa.
He handed himself in at a recently renovated jail in the small mining town of Estcourt in his KwaZulu-natal home province.
The sentence handed to Zuma by the Constitutional Court last week for snubbing anti-graft investigators also set a benchmark for the continent in jailing a former head of state for refusing to respond to a corruption probe.
Many South Africans hailed Zuma’s incarceration as a watershed moment that would strengthen the rule of law in the country.
Former corruption buster and exombudswoman Thuli Madonsela hailed it as a “glorious day, in that it says that the rule of law prevails”.
If he had not gone to prison, “it would have sent shock waves to the system”, she said on public television yesterday.
The day before, police had warned they were prepared to arrest Zuma by a midnight deadline to enforce the ruling, unless the top court instructed otherwise.
But in the end the former leader decided to comply.
Just minutes before the deadline expired, his foundation tweeted that Zuma had “decided to comply with the incarceration order” and hand himself to a correctional facility.
This is the second time Zuma, democratic South Africa’s former president — after Nelson Mandela and Thabo
Mbeki — has been in prison.
He spent 10 years in jail on the notorious Robben Island for his role in the armed struggle against the apartheid system.
In a tweet, Zuma’s daughter, Dudu Zuma-Sambudla, said that her father had jokingly said on his way to prison “that he hopes they still have his same overalls from Robben Island”.
Zuma had earlier in the week mounted last-ditch legal defence and refused to turn himself in.
On Wednesday, he then pleaded anew with the court for an 11th-hour reprieve, requesting that it suspend its arrest orders until all legal processes were finalised — under the ruling, police were given three days to arrest him if he failed to surrender.
Zuma’s first application to halt his arrest was heard on Tuesday, but the judgement was reserved.
Separately, he has pleaded with the Constitutional Court to reconsider and rescind its jail order. That challenge will be heard on Monday.
Zuma, 79, was forced out of office in 2018 and replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa after a nine-year tenure stained by corruption scandals and the taint of cronyism.
Critics nicknamed him the “Teflon president” for his perceived ability to sidestep justice. But his fortunes changed on June 29 when the court issued its judgement against him for contempt.
Zuma had refused to obey a court order to appear before a commission probing the siphoning of state assets.