ANC IN KZN AGAINST ZUMA JUDGMENT!
THE ANC in KZN is against the court ruling that set aside former president Jacob Zuma’s medical parole and ordered him to go back to jail to finish his 15-month sentence.
They want the national leadership to join the court challenge to oppose this.
The party’s provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli said the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) will table a proposal to the National Executive Committee for it to join Zuma’s legal team in its challenge to appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court of Appeal.
This follows the North Gauteng High Court ruling on Wednesday that the granting of Zuma’s medical parole was unlawful.
Ntuli, in a television interview, said the PEC was of the view that the court ruling was political and it served no purpose as Zuma was effectively under house arrest.
He said sending him back to jail could potentially lead to the unrest that happened in July that led to looting in KZN and Gauteng.
Ntuli was, however, quick to say that the party would be engaging its structures while the appeal is pending to make sure Zuma supporters don’t repeat the deadly unrest.
He said the party in the province did not condone the manner in which Zuma supporters expressed their unhappiness with the decision to send him to jail initially, but the recent ruling should have taken into consideration the events of July which led to the loss of lives and damage to property.
Ntuli said the July unrest was unnecessary as it was sparked by the jailing of Zuma.
“We want to engage with the national leadership to say to the national leadership under the current circumstances, we think that the ANC itself must join this case as a friend of court in support of former president Zuma primarily because what happened in July ended up not being the responsibility of the court.
“It was appropriated to ANC supporters and ANC members. The crisis had to be managed by government and the political leadership of the ANC, nobody else,” said Ntuli.
He defended the party’s position that it was interfering in court processes, saying the matter was taken to court by the opposition, the DA, in the first place, to challenge the medical parole of Zuma.
Ntuli said this was a deliberate move by the DA because it wants to leave the ANC in crisis in that the governing party might lose control of the process when Zuma supporters challenge the decision and take the matter to the streets like they did in July.
He reasoned that this is why the national leadership of the ANC should join Zuma’s legal team as well as the Correctional Services to appeal the court ruling.
“We want to go there on our own, to say to the court, of course, you must make all decisions based in law. But we believe that in so doing, you can’t be oblivious to the consequences of your own judgment.”
The correctional services said it will appeal the ruling, while the Jacob Zuma Foundation said sending the former president back to jail was tantamount to a death sentence.
Foundation spokesman Mzwanele Manyi said it was bizarre that the court, in its ruling, overlooked certain sections of the law that empowered former correctional services national commissioner Arthur Fraser to grant Zuma medical parole.
He said Zuma’s lawyers will argue in the appeal case that the parties that applied for the parole to be declared unlawful had no right to be in court to challenge Fraser’s decision, and likened them to parties risen from the grass.
