Tuesday, 19 March, 2024
HomeMedico-LegalRamaphosa ‘gave the green light’ to Zuma’s medical parole

Ramaphosa ‘gave the green light’ to Zuma’s medical parole

City Press sources have claimed what many others have already suggested must have happened – that President Cyril Ramaphosa gave Correctional Services boss Arthur Fraser the green light to authorise Jacob Zuma's release from prison.

According to the report in City Press, Fraser consulted the president before deciding to release Zuma based on three medical assessments. One of the sources said: “The old man’s seriously sick. There were three medical assessments, conducted by three different doctors, saying the Correctional Service medical facilities were unable to cater for his ailing health issues. This information will be realised once the matter’s heard in court. Fraser didn’t want to have Zuma dying in prison. That could be a repeat of the chaos in KZN and Gauteng, if not worse.”

Another source privy to the details of last weekend’s meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee reportedly said Ramaphosa told the participants he had been consulted about Zuma's release and that he had approved the prison boss’ decision to order his release. A senior ANC leader in KZN is quoted as saying: “What we have here is a man (Fraser) taking the fall for the party. There was an instruction from the top to let out Zuma. When he was arrested, we all knew he was going to be released before his time ended. ”

The leader said Fraser had offered himself as the “sacrificial lamb because he has the power, and so that the ANC takes no blame after all the dust has settled”.

Fraser’s decision has been met with outrage, with the DA in the vanguard of several potential legal challenges. However, notes City Press, Llewellyn Curlewis, legal expert in the University of Pretoria’s department of procedural law, said that in strict legal terms, Fraser had not broken the law. Curlewis said the Correctional Services Act gave Fraser powers to grant Zuma parole.

He said Zuma had been sentenced to 15 months behind bars, which was less than the 24 months prescribed in the Act. As a result, he qualified for parole. He said the statement issued by Fraser’s department on 5 September detailed that his decision had been made in accordance with section 75(7)(a) of the Act. That section, he said, gave Fraser the prerogative to grant correctional supervision, day parole or parole.

However, that would typically be done on the recommendation of the Medical Parole Advisory Board, which is tasked with establishing whether – under the provisions of the Correctional Services Act – an inmate is “terminally ill and physically incapacitated” or “suffering from an illness that severely limits their daily activity or self-care”.

Dr Notende Botwekazi Mgulwa, who serves on the board, reportedly told News24 that it was “satisfied that it’s been clarified what the recommendation of the Medical Parole Advisory Board was”, but would not be commenting further.

Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has launched an application to review and set aside Fraser’s “patently unlawful” decision and has urged the Gauteng High Court to review Zuma’s medical parole because the procedure is “vulnerable to abuse and can be used unlawfully to commute the sentences of the politically-connected”.

In his submission, reports BusinessLIVE, Steenhuisen casts doubt on Fraser’s motives and the severity of the 79-year-old former president’s ill health. “His ill health was not the reason for granting medical parole,” he claims.

Steenhuisen admits he can only speculate on Zuma's condition as neither the Zuma himself nor the Correctional Services Department has disclosed the details. “Here, I do no more than state that there are reasons to doubt Zuma’s protestations that he is ill enough to qualify for medical parole,” Steenhuisen writes.

Among the grounds on which the DA leader has launched the challenge to Zuma’s effective get-out-of-jail card, Steenhuisen lists the recommendation against Zuma’s release made by the parole board. Steenhuisen said there were question marks about the release as Zuma has not disclosed the condition from which he suffers. However, Zuma’s lawyers have said in court that private information on his well-being is sensitive and a matter of state security.

Steenhuisen makes the point that “if Mr Zuma were gravely ill, he would likely have disclosed his medical condition to clear the air and to stave off legal challenges like this one. The fact that he has not leads to the inference that he might not be so ill”.

He adds: “If he wishes for this punishment to be commuted for medical reasons, he must be comfortable with those reasons being public.”

Steenhuisen drew on a statement by Zuma’s eponymous foundation via social media on 6 August. After Zuma was transferred from Estcourt prison to an unidentified hospital, the Jacob G Zuma Foundation's spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi reported Zuma was undergoing a routine annual check-up.

A week and a half later Correctional Services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo issued a statement reporting Zuma remained in hospital after a “surgical procedure” with more scheduled for the following days. Nearly a month to the day after Zuma’s move from prison to custody in hospital, the prisons department announced he had been placed on medical parole, without indicating who was responsible for the decision or on what grounds it was granted.

According to BusinessLIVE, Steenhuisen suggests the head of Estcourt prison passed the buck, after receiving the parole board’s report (seemingly among other unspecified reports). The prison is headed up by Nompumelelo Radebe, whom Steenhuisen alleged told Fraser about reports that “require” Zuma’s release. In choosing to place Zuma on medical parole, against the board’s recommendation, Fraser either erred in procedure or assumed the authority to do so, said Steenhuisen.

Steenhuisen refers to Schabir Shaik in his affidavit, saying that since being released on medical parole, Shaik “has regularly been seen golfing, allegedly throttled and slapped a journalist, and was accused of punching and slapping a man at a mosque during an argument over parking”, writes Daily Maverick. “This is not the conduct of a terminally ill man. He remains alive and apparently healthy today, 12 years later”.

Furthermore, it had been “widely speculated that Mr Shaik was released not because he was genuinely ill, but because of his proximity to Mr Zuma. His apparently rude health in the 12 years since his release support this conclusion.” Steenhuisen says it is possible that Zuma was only diagnosed with an illness that justified medical parole after being jailed, but that this was “contradicted by known facts and there is no publicly available evidence to support that conclusion”.

The court, therefore, could not accept without evidence the word of Correctional Services about the former president’s eligibility for parole. Steenhuisen says Fraser took the decision “for an ulterior purpose, not permitted by the (applicable) Act and Regulations, and not rationally connected to the purpose of medical parole or the information before the commissioner”. The effect of the parole decision was “‘to evade the Constitutional Court’s decision to imprison Mr Zuma”.

“Crucially,” argues Steenhuisen, “the job of the commissioner is not to determine whether medical parole is medically appropriate. He does not have the relevant expertise.”

Steenhuisen said the ulterior purpose of placing Zuma on medical parole was to solve a political problem for Ramaphosa. “He knows the elections are seven weeks away. He knows that structures in KZN were in open revolt against him.” He said there was a political imperative to ensure Zuma was released so that he could participate in the ANC's elections campaign.

Steenhuisen said Zuma was imprisoned for contempt of court so serious that it constituted a near existential threat to the authority of the judicial system. “Mr Fraser's parole's decision harms the court in exactly the same way Mr Zuma's original defiance and contempt of the court did. It again makes a mockery of the judicial processes and sends a very clear message to SA that if you are politically connected you do not need to worry, because there is a different set of rules for the ANC and their cadres and another set of rules for the people of SA.”

Steenhuisen said it was a terrible indictment on Ramaphosa that he not only failed to speak against this egregious decision, but openly welcomed it.

 

City Press report – Cyril gave green light for Zuma parole (Restricted acccess)

 

TimesLIVE article – Decision to place Zuma on parole taken for ulterior motive, DA says (Open access)

 

Daily Maverick article – Zuma medical parole makes a mockery of judicial process, contends Democratic Alliance court challenge (Open access)

 

BusinessLIVE article – Ill health not the basis for Zuma’s medical parole, DA leader says in court papers (Restricted access)

 

News24 article – Override: Questions over ex-spy boss Fraser’s role in Zuma parole (Restricted access)

 

See more from MedicalBrief archives:

 

Outrage over medical parole for Zuma by outgoing Commissioner

 

'Second-guessing Zuma’s medical doctors unconstitutional’ — JGZ Foundation

 

Zuma’s ‘ life-threatening emergency’ again spotlights the weaponising of medical testimony

 

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