Mashudu Sadike
COURTS are competing with the opinion of medical experts as far as Jacob Zuma’s parole goes, the former president’s lawyer, Dali Mpofu, argued yesterday.
Mpofu was challenging the Gauteng High Court’s decision to set aside the former president’s successful application for parole when he submitted his arguments in front of a full Bench at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.
Zuma was granted medical parole in September last year after serving two months of a 15-month prison sentence following his refusal to appear before the state capture commission chaired by now Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
The former president handed himself over in July 2021 after the apex court found him guilty of contempt of court. The move sparked unrest that resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people and billions worth of damage to public infrastructure, mostly in KwaZulu-Natal.
AfriForum, the DA and the Helen Suzman Foundation were the applicants in the matter that saw Zuma ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence in custody.
Mpofu argued that Zuma had the right to be protected by the Constitution of the country, saying that former prison boss Arthur Fraser considered medical experts’ advice that Zuma was terminally ill and therefore recommended that he be paroled.
He said in court: “The very reason that he is stable is because he (Zuma) is sitting at a private hospital in Pretoria. That private hospital in Pretoria is not the same thing as the Estcourt facility and we cannot keep him there for 15 months in the private hospital.”
Mpofu was referring to Fraser’s reason for granting Zuma parole.
He added: “We simply do not have the facilities to cater for what is said in these reports (recommendations that Zuma had a terminal disease). We cannot override the expert opinion that he is suffering from a terminal illness.
“(It is) a judicial fact, which is a fact of life. Nobody in this country can say the man does not suffer from a terminal illness when doctors have said so.
“He, like everybody else is entitled to the protection afforded by our Constitution… and the day that medical experts say that this man is terminally ill…
“Medical experts that are registered with the HPCSA (Health Professions Council of South Africa) who have taken the Hippocratic oath… and we say what? We say he is not sick enough. How can a court of law know better than medical experts?” asked Mpofu.
“Who are we to say no… simply because of some flimsy argument that he is now stable in a hospital setting.”