Jacob Zuma was not in the room when South Africa’s Constitutional Court sent him to prison. The former president, then 79, stayed away as Judge Sisi Khampepe read out the sentence: 15 months, unsuspended, for contempt of court.
“The constitutional court can do nothing but conclude that Mr Zuma is guilty of the crime of contempt of court,” she said. He was ordered to hand himself in within five days, failing which police would be told to arrest him and deliver him to a correctional centre.
A walkout and a refusal
The case grew out of an inquiry into high-level graft, led by the deputy chief justice, Raymond Zondo. Zuma had set it up himself, under pressure from mounting scandals, shortly before the ruling African National Congress pushed him out in 2018. He had been president for nearly nine years.
He testified once, in July 2019, then walked out days later. Invitations to return were ignored, with Zuma citing medical reasons and preparation for another corruption trial. He appeared briefly in November and left before questioning. In February, Zondo said he would ask the Constitutional Court to find him in contempt and press for jail.
Zuma denied wrongdoing and claimed Zondo was pursuing a personal vendetta. The court recorded that he had “repeatedly reiterated that he would rather be imprisoned than to cooperate with the commission or comply with the order made”.
Khampepe said the defiance would be punished. “I am left with no option but to commit Mr Zuma to imprisonment,” she said, in the hope of sending “an unequivocal message” that the rule of law prevails.
Zondo had argued the stakes were wider than one man. If summons and court orders could be ignored with impunity, he said, “there will be very little that will be left of our democracy.”
The Gupta allegations and the arms deal
Most of the alleged corruption before the inquiry involves three brothers from a wealthy Indian business family, the Guptas. They won lucrative government contracts and were allegedly able to choose cabinet ministers.
Zuma faces a separate case too: 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering over the 1999 purchase of fighter jets, patrol boats and military gear from five European arms firms. The price was 30bn rand, then close to $5bn. Zuma was deputy to President Thabo Mbeki at the time. At a hearing the month before the sentence he pleaded not guilty and called the prosecution politically motivated, accusing government lawyers of working “not to find the truth but to bolster a narrative of a corrupt political leader”.
His successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, a labour activist turned wealthy tycoon, took over after a bitter internal fight in the ANC and amid public outrage over mismanagement. He has since taken steps against corruption, even as fresh scandals over Covid-19 emergency supply contracts and relief grants stoked more anger.
