Jacob Zuma Isn’t A Man With A Cause. Just A Wily Politician Trying To Evade The Law

MCEBISI NDLETYANA|

SOUTH Africa’s Constitutional Court ruling to imprison the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, was unprecedented. But it wasn’t unexpected. The author of the majority judgment, Justice Sisi Khampepe, captured the inevitability of the outcome somewhere in the middle the ruling, when she noted:

“For I am not in the habit of playing my cards close to my chest, let me, at this earliest opportunity, state that Mr Zuma has earned himself a punitive sanction of direct and unsuspended sentence.”

Nor was Zuma’s wrongful behaviour guided by any thought-out, long term strategy.

It began as an instinctive reaction to evade accountability, but quickly hardened into a mode of behaviour as Zuma failed to come up with a reasonable defence.

Let’s start with the inevitability of the custodial sentence of 15 months.

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The Constitutional Court correctly understands its role in