SCA to hand down Zuma medical parole judgment

Zuma is appealing an earlier high court ruling which set aside the decision by former prisons' boss Arthur Fraser to grant the former president medical parole. 

The former president was handed a 15-month sentence by the Constitutional Court for contempt after he refused to testify at the state capture inquiry. 

Fraser then overruled the medical parole board to grant Zuma an opportunity to serve out his sentence at home. 

The Jacob Zuma Foundation's spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi says the former president will not be in attendance.

"No, I do not think it is necessary. They are just issuing judgment. They might not even sit, they might just issue a statement so there is no point in him (former president Jacob Zuma) attending."

Manyi says medical parole is not a holiday.

"Whatever decision that was made, whether rightly or wrongly, cannot be blamed on President Zuma because he did not even himself apply for the medical parole, but it was the government itself that saw it fit to assess him and make a call that he must be put on a medical parole. Now, whether that is wrong or right it should not be put on President Zuma, as it is not his problem.

"We do not see how any of this should affect him in any event. He has run the race of being a prisoner for 18 months and that prison time has gone. The same government has also released him from prison so this is just an excise from where we are sitting as the foundation, this is judgment to correct the law. It has got nothing to do with President Zuma. 

"It is just something to make sure that the case law is wrong for judges to think that a medical parole is a holiday, because one has a Correctional Services officer that they would need to report too and having numerous restrictions, having to ask for permissions to attend funerals."

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