AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER
JACOB Zuma, the former South African president, has again attacked the country’s courts, warning that SA was heading towards a “constitutional dictatorship”.
In a statement issued days after the Constitutional Court, the country’s highest court, dismissed his application to have his 15 month sentence set aside, Zuma repeated his attack on the judiciary, including his belief that the courts were out to get him
In a majority judgment, the Constitutional Court rejected Zuma’s rescission application, describing it , among others, as “litigious skullduggery”.
Zuma intends to take his case to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.
In his statement, Zuma said SA was changing from a constitutional democracy to a constitutional dictatorship.
“As with many of our leaders during the struggle, I believe that history will vindicate me when I say that South Africa today is in the process of changing from a constitutional democracy to a constitutional dictatorship. After the judgment of the Constitutional Court on 17 September 2021, I am more than certain of this than ever before. Many of our people are blind to this reality at this point because they have been successfully hypnotized by the long-standing anti-Zuma narrative. It is perhaps convenient or even befitting for others that the laws of this country be repeatedly bent and manipulated when dealing with Zuma,” he said.
The former president again criticised the manner in which the judicial Commission into State Capture was appointed and how it handled its dispute with him around his unhappiness around its chair, Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
Zuma said he felt vindicated by the minority judgment of the Constitutional Court which found that his sentence was unlawful and invalid.
Zuma said: “Once the whole contempt debacle had run its full course with judge Zondo’s subordinates presiding over a matter that had directly called into question his integrity as a judge, the Constitutional Court again made decisions and took actions that have never been taken in our law by asking that I do a mitigation of sentence where there had been no conviction. I feel vindicated in that it still remains the contention of the minority judges that everything that has happened since then has been unconstitutional. It has never happened that in a dissenting decision of the Constitutional Court that the dissenting judges go as far as accusing their colleagues of acting unconstitutionally.”
