South Africa’s Zuma Back In Court In Fresh Bid To Avert Jail

South Africa’s ex-president Jacob Zuma, who was last week sentenced to a 15-month jail term for contempt, has made another legal attempt to dodge incarceration by going to court to seek the ‘suspension of an arrest order’.

His latest bid in the Pietermaritzburg High Court came as police said they will not make any move to arrest him until he has fully exhausted his legal battle against the sentence.

After Today News, New York recalls that Zuma has mounted a two-pronged last-ditch attempt to avoid jail after the Constitutional Court, the country’s top judicial authority, slapped him with the sentence last week.

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He was told to hand himself over in by midnight last Sunday, failing which police would be instructed to arrest him within the following three days.

On Friday, Zuma, 79, rushed to court seeking to halt the execution of the arrest order.

His lawyer Dali Mpofu told the Pietermaritzburg High Court, as it started sitting, that he was ‘effectively’ seeking to interdict the execution of the arrest warrant for a man who turns 80 on his next birthday and whose ‘health condition is uncontestably precarious’, is not a flight risk and is in the care and security of the state.

Before the hearing even started, lawyers for the police had written to Constitutional Court saying they will pause on the order to arrest Zuma given the ‘unique situation presented by the developments and the legal matrix involved.’

Mpofu commended the police for considering “the aggravated situation in the country around this matter,” pointing to the ‘volatile security situation that may be posed by this matter’.

Zuma has separately pleaded with the Constitutional Court to reconsider and rescind its jail order. That challenge will be heard on July 12

He was ordered to be jailed for disobeying a court order to appear before a commission probing massive state corruption under his nine-year tenure.

AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK