Jacob Zuma on Thursday started a 15-month sentence for contempt of court docket, turning into post-apartheid South Africa’s first President to be jailed after a drama that campaigners stated led to a victory for rule of regulation.
Zuma, 79, reported to jail early Thursday after mounting a last-ditch authorized bid and stoking defiance amongst radical supporters who had rallied at his rural dwelling.
South Africa’s prime court docket on June 29 slapped Zuma with a 15-month time period for refusing an order to seem earlier than a probe into the corruption that entangled his 9 years in energy. As police warned that he confronted arrest from midnight Wednesday, Zuma handed himself in to a jail within the rural city of Estcourt in his dwelling province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Many South Africans hailed his incarceration as a watershed second.
Former corruption buster and ex-ombudswoman Thuli Madonsela hailed it as a “glorious day, in that it says that the rule of law prevails”. If he had not gone to jail, “it would have sent shock waves to the system,” she stated.
Investigators say that below Zuma, billions of {dollars} in state property had been siphoned off by cronies.
Zuma had been given a deadline of Sunday night time for turning himself in. Failing his give up, police got three days, till midnight Wednesday, to arrest him.