- Former President Jacob Zuma has extended his trip to Russia.
- The Department of Correctional Services is yet to announce whether Zuma should return to jail.
- Zuma was expected to return to South Africa on Tuesday.
Former president Jacob Zuma has extended his trip to Moscow as the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) decides whether he should return to prison.
News24 understands from two sources who have knowledge of Zuma’s trip that he was meant to return on Tuesday, but that he extended the trip.
He is seeking medical treatment in the Russian capital, although the details of his illness are unknown.
The DCS said on Wednesday that the department was yet to decide on Zuma’s fate.
Jacob Zuma Foundation spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi confirmed that Zuma had not returned from Moscow.
“I don’t know when he will be coming back,” he said.
Manyi, who is also an EFF member of Parliament, said he did not know what Zuma’s health condition was.
A source said Zuma planned to return next Wednesday, but Manyi said he could not confirm when the former head of state would return.
Last Thursday, the Constitutional Court dismissed the Department of Correctional Services’ application for leave to appeal a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling that Zuma should return to prison.
The apex court found the department’s appeal “bears no reasonable prospect of success” and dismissed the application with costs.
Zuma was jailed in July 2021 after he was sentenced to 15 months for contempt of the Constitutional Court after he refused to obey an order to appear before the Zondo Commission.
However, hardly two months later, he was released on medical parole after then national commissioner of correctional services, Arthur Fraser, overruled the Medical Parole Advisory Board’s (MPAB) recommendation that the former president did not qualify.
The DA, AfriForum and Helen Suzman Foundation asked the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to review Fraser’s decision and set it aside, which it did. Zuma and the DCS then appealed, but the SCA upheld the High Court’s decision.
The SCA found Zuma “has not finished serving his sentence”.
It said: “He must return to the Estcourt Correctional Centre to do so. Whether the time spent by Mr Zuma on unlawfully granted medical parole should be taken into account in determining the remaining period of his incarceration, is not a matter for this court to decide.”
“It is a matter to be considered by the commissioner (Makgothi Thobakgale). If he is empowered by law to do so, the commissioner might take that period into account in determining any application or grounds for release.”
After the Constitutional Court’s decision last week, the SCA’s ruling stands.
