The National Commissioner of Correctional Services has taken the fight to keep former president Jacob Zuma out of prison, to the Constitutional Court.
Last December, the Pretoria High Court ruled that former commissioner Arthur Fraser’s decision to release Zuma on medical parole was unlawful.
And last month, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) by and large upheld that ruling.
Now the current commissioner – Makgothi Thobakgale has turned to the country’s apex court in a last-ditch bid to salvage his predecessor’s decision.
Thobakgale, who succeeded Fraser after his contract came to end last September, has now filed an application for leave to appeal against the SCA’s ruling, with the Constitutional Court.
This represents the last avenue available to him.
But a Constitutional Court hearing is not the Commissioner’s for the taking – he has to motivate for it.
In support of having the apex court considered the matter, Thobakgale says in the department’s papers that the case raises a constitutional issue.
This, he says, is because the decision to grant Zuma medical parole entails the exercise of public power.
He also says the matter involves the interpretation and applica that of the Correctional Services Act; and that it was the Constitutional Court that handed down Zuma’s sentence, after he had refused to comply with its order to appear before the State Capture Commission of Inquiry.
Further, he says the matter raises arguable points of law of general public importance, including whether the Commissioner has the power to place an inmate on medical parole without a positive recommendation from the Medical Parole Advisory Board, as he did in Zuma’s case.
-EWN
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