Court orders exleader to prison for contempt
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s highest court Tuesday ordered the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma, the country’s former president, for 15 months on contempt charges, after he defied an order to appear before a corruption inquiry examining the breathtaking financial scandals that tainted his tenure as the country’s leader from 2009 to 2018.
The move to detain Zuma, a comrade of Nelson Mandela and one of the dominant figures in the governing African National Congress party since apartheid ended in 1994, was a notable development in the legacy of corruption that shadowed his years in power. Zuma was not in court Tuesday, and he was not immediately taken into custody.
The decision by the Constitutional Court to have Zuma arrested came five months after that same body ordered him to appear before the corruption inquiry.
But Zuma, 79, defied the court. Not only did he fail to show up to testify before the inquiry, but he also ignored the high court’s contempt proceedings, declining to so much as mount a defense.
The call to imprison Zuma for his defiance comes at a time when many fedup South Africans seem to have coalesced behind the efforts of President Cyril Ramaphosa, to root out corruption in the government and the ANC party.
Zuma is being prosecuted on charges of racketeering, corruption, fraud and money laundering after being accused of taking bribes from a French arms manufacturer when he was deputy president in 1999.