29 November 2022
Days after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) found that his release on medical parole was unlawful, former president Jacob Zuma appeared unperturbed as he danced and dined at a new Umhlanga restaurant that shares his name.
No stranger to ceremonial ribbon cutting, the medical parolee was well enough to show off his dance moves at the opening of Zuma, after accepting an invitation from celebrity chef David Manal.
Also on the guest list was Schabir Shaik, suited up, grinning, and doing a jig alongside the former president, 13 years after being granted medical parole as he was “terminally ill”.
A seemingly jolly Shaik danced beside Zuma, whom the SCA ruled last week was unlawfully granted medical parole by former prisons boss Arthur Fraser, who overrode the recommendation by the Medical Parole Advisory Board that the former president did not qualify for it.
Zuma was arrested in July last year for contempt of the Constitutional Court and sentenced to 15 months in jail. He was released less than two months later.
He smiled and posed for photos with Shaik, his former financial advisor, who was released on medical parole in 2009 after serving just more than two years of a 15-year sentence.
He was convicted of two counts of corruption and one of fraud relating to his facilitation of a bribe, allegedly by French arms company Thint, to Zuma.
