Some legal experts have warned that former president Jacob Zuma could face further sanctions over his refusal to allow a state-appointed doctor to assess his health.
This as Zuma’s ill health looks likely to force another postponement in his corruption case related to the multi-billion-rand arms deal.
The matter which was set to have been heard in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg on Thursday is expected to be postponed to September 20.
Zuma was recently granted medical parole following his 15-month jail term after the Constitutional Court found him guilty of contempt of court for refusing to continue to appear before the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
Legal expert Dr Llewellyn Curlewis says, “A presiding judge won’t just give mere directives, he will give an instruction to which will ultimately amount to a direct order by the court and non-compliance of that order will be met with a negative inference or serious sanctioning by the court.”
“The court might for example decide to not adhere to requests by Zuma’s legal teams for further postponements in future, in which event Zuma can be arrested and brought before court to stand trial ultimately. He requested to be there in person and now that he had the opportunity to do so, he’s for some reason seen to be playing all kinds of scenarios not to attend but the court can literally stop that avenue,” explains Curlewis.
The video below is last month’s Zuma corruption trial proceeding
Documents relating to arms deal
In August, the African National Congress’ (ANC) deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte insisted that the party doesn’t have any documents that would help Zuma in his money laundering and corruption trial relating to the arms deal.
Zuma had written to the ANC treasurer-general’s office to demand a list of payments made to the governing party from companies that allegedly benefited from the country’s multi-billion-rand arms procurement contracts.
He said this would help him to prove that he neither used his position in the ANC nor in government, to benefit from the arms deal as the state alleges in its papers in his corruption case.
The ANC had earlier said through its lawyers that the documents were destroyed when the party’s offices were flooded.
