South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, ordered to surrender himself to start a 15-month jail term for contempt, Sunday said that he would not be doing so by the court-set deadline.
“No need for me to go to jail today,” he told journalists at his Nkandla homestead in Kwa-Zulu Natal province, where hundreds of his supporters are camped outside in solidarity.
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“They cannot accept papers and expect me to go to jail,” he said, referring to his legal bid to challenge the sentence.
“Sending me to jail during the height of a pandemic, at my age, is the same as sentencing me to death,” he added.
Earlier, the former president, 79, had told supporters his “constitutional rights were abused” by judges of the country’s constitutional court.
He and his legal team had written to the court to plead their case that the sentencing had been wrong, in a bid to either reduce it or strike it out entirely, he added.
He led supporters in a rendition of the anti-apartheid song “Umshini Wami” (Bring Me My Machine Gun), which has become his signature tune.
Zuma’s supporters have vowed to render South Africa ungovernable if he is jailed