The #FreeJacobZuma campaign says it is launching several programmes of action in view of the ‘failure to release Zuma’ and ‘all the legal targeting and persecution that he has endured’.
The campaign said its members would turn out for Zuma’s appearance tomorrow at the Pietermaritzburg High Court in KwaZulu-Natal.
Meanwhile, according to City Press, National police commissioner Khehla Sitole has extended the deployment of SA Police Service (SAPS) members to the two hot spot provinces to deal with potential protests ahead of the former president’s court appearance, his first public appearance since being jailed early last month for contempt of court.
The newspaper had ‘learnt that Sitole approved this following a request by the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure for the extension of the special operation, which initially commenced as a special event from July 13 to 31’.
The #FreeJacobZuma campaign accuses President Ramaphosa of unconscionable arrogance and has instructed attorneys to proceed with legal action against Ramaphosa on ‘the basis of dereliction of duty, and unfitness to hold office’.
It rejects with contempt ‘the deliberate attempts to link our campaign to the violence and looting that took place over the past few weeks’ and accuses him of ‘scapegoating’ the campaign to escape responsibility for having failed to address the needs and demands of South Africans.
‘Fortunately, despite his ill-conceived actions, the President failed to divide the entire nation along ethnic lines.’
The campaign says that Ramaphosa’s fundamentally wrong characterisation of the unrest led to ‘the preventable genocide that led the Indian community in Phoenix to mistakably (sic) believe that it had carte blanche to arm itself, and go on a killing spree of innocent “Zulu” people’.
Calling Zuma ‘the first political prisoner since the advent of democracy’, the campaign added: ‘We are of the firm belief that there exists a solid prima facie case of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against this administration’, and that it would lodge a case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The signatories to the campaign include Carl Niehaus, Andile Lungisa and 17 others.
[Image: World Economic Forum/Matthew Jordaan, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107129999]