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Jacob Zuma launched last-minute legal bids to avoid imprisonment for contempt of the country’s highest court, as the former South African president rallied supporters to resist any move to stop him.
South Africa’s constitutional court had ordered Zuma to be released on Sunday to begin a 15-month prison sentence for defying orders to attend an investigation examining systematic corruption under his nine-year presidency.
On Saturday, however, the court agreed to hear Zuma’s offer to rescind his sentence on the grounds that the 79-year-old was too frail to survive in prison, although the general public presumes he was not afraid of being imprisoned by the which he has called political persecution. “Judges without law.”
“It is my own unstable state of health and it is my physical life that threatens the imprisonment order,” Zuma said in legal documents.
Zuma had so far refused to liaise with the constitutional court during his exit from the investigation, where dozens of witnesses have implicated him in a graft, including allegedly helping the Gupta business family plunder state resources. Zuma and the Guptas deny the wrongdoings.
Zuma’s lawyers have also asked a lower court to ban the prison sentence, with a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, which indicates he will not be arrested until Wednesday at the earliest. Meanwhile, the constitutional court will hear his case on July 12.
Lawyers said neither bid would likely succeed, but the legal drama has widened a confrontation in which the rule of law is at stake in South Africa if the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa allows Zuma to resist arrest.
This weekend small bands of Zuma supporters waved the colors of the ruling African National Congress and made vigils outside their property, some dressed in the uniforms of the wing of the disbanded military veterans of the ANC.
Demonstrations challenged the official ban on meetings to control coronavirus infections during the deterioration of South Africa’s third wave.
Zuma had summoned supporters on Saturday to defend him and said he had done nothing wrong. Brandishing a traditional shield, Zuma added that the investigation should not have investigated the “state secrets” under his rule.
The show of support for the former president has shaken the ANC, which postponed a meeting of senior officials this weekend so that, instead, it could send them to the scene to “give clear and principled leadership to to guarantee the maintenance of the rule of law ”and to prevent violence.
But the rally has also exposed the limits of Zuma’s shrinking power base. The Zulu king, Misuzulu kaZwelithini, banned members of traditional Zulu warrior regiments from going to the former president due to restrictions on meetings.
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