City Press reported yesterday that two unnamed sources claimed President Cyril Ramaphosa ‘allegedly gave national commissioner of correctional services Arthur Fraser the green light to authorise the release of former president Jacob Zuma from prison on controversial parole grounds’.
According to the report, one of the sources privy to the discussions said: ‘The old man’s seriously sick. There were three medical assessments, conducted by three different doctors, saying that the correctional service medical facilities were unable to cater for his ailing health issues. This information will be realeased once the matter’s heard in court.’
The source said that Fraser ‘didn’t want to have Zuma dying in prison’, adding: ‘Imagine what chaos could [erupt] if he died in prison. That could be a repeat of the chaos in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, if not worse.’
City Press said another source, who was privy to the details of last weekend’s meeting of the governing party’s National Executive Committee, said Ramaphosa told the participants that he had been consulted about the release of Zuma and that he had approved the prison boss’s decision to order his release.
The report quoted a ‘senior ANC leader in KwaZulu-Natal’ as saying: ‘What we have here is a man [Fraser] taking the fall for the party. There was an instruction from the top to let Zuma out. When he was arrested, we all knew he was going to be released before his time ended. It was all a plan in motion. Obviously, there was lobbying involved, but this plan was decided long before now.’
Fraser this week confirmed that he had overruled the medical parole advisory board’s recommendation against Zuma’s release on medical grounds as it had found him to be in a stable condition.
Fraser’s decision has been met with outrage, with numerous interested parties mounting legal challenges regarding the matter.