By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Former president Jacob Zuma has instructed his lawyers to challenge his jail sentence at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
This is according to a tweet sent by the Jacob Zuma Foundation.
This comes after the Constitutional Court on Friday upheld its decision to sentence Zuma to 15 months in prison.
Justice Sisi Khampepe delivered the judgement after the ConCourt’s full bench had deliberated on the matter over the past two months. The court also dismissed Zuma’s application with costs – including the cost of two counsel.
“The majority of the constitutional court justices find that Zuma has not met the statutory requirements for a rescission,”Khampepe said.
Zuma launched the rescission application in a bid to have the order reversed.
The thrust of Zuma’s main arguments was the following:
The order was erroneously granted in his absence as an affected party.
– The apex court ought to have given him a reasonable opportunity to present evidence on the question of whether it should sentence him to direct imprisonment.
– He was sentenced without a trial, and the Constitutional Court failed to refer the matter to the National Director of Public Prosecutions.
– The order infringed his constitutional rights, including the right to freedom and security.
Zuma also argued that these “constitutional irregularities” had the effect of bringing the meaning of a rescindable “error” within the constitutional framework and should be interpreted to include situations in which a court grants an unconstitutional order.
The majority judgment findings hinged on the fact that Zuma was never precluded from participating in the contempt proceedings but rather that he elected to do so.
“Zuma intentionally declined to participate in the contempt proceedings and disdainfully dismissed a further opportunity when invited to do so. Zuma only now attempts to justify his absence from this court,” the majority judgment, penned by Justice Sisi Khampepe, read.
The judgment noted that it would fly in the face of the interests of justice for a litigant, Zuma in this case, to be allowed to “wilfully refuse to participate in litigation and then expect the opportunity to reopen the case when it suits them”.
“It is simply not in the interests of justice to tolerate this manner of litigious vacillation.”
Khampepe further said the court would not accept that litigants could “be allowed to butcher, of their own will, judicial process which, in all other respects, has been carried out with the utmost degree of regularity, only to then plead the “absent victim”.
“If everything turned on actual presence, it would be entirely too easy for litigants to render void every judgment and order ever to be granted, by merely electing absentia (absence).”
The apex court further rubbished Zuma’s reasons as to why he failed to appear before the commission.
Zuma was incarcerated in June after the ConCourt found him guilty of contempt of court. The former president had refused to abide by its order to testify at the state capture commission.