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The rejection comes a day after the former leader surrendered to the police, but still challenged his sentence.
A South African court has rejected former South African President Jacob Zuma’s request to postpone his current prison sentence, a day after he surrendered to police to start a 15-month sentence.
Zuma is currently in prison at Estcourt Correctional Center for failing to obey a court order to testify before a judicial commission investigating allegations of corruption during his tenure as President of South Africa in 2009 to 2018.
Although he surrendered on Wednesday night, Zuma challenged his sentence. He has another legal offer to release which will be heard by the Constitutional Court, the country’s supreme court, on Monday.
“The claim is dismissed with costs,” the Pietermaritzburg High Court judge, presiding over the case, said on Friday.
The High Court ruling came hours after the same court dismissed a request from Ace Magashule, secretary general of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to overturn his suspension for corruption in a separate case.
The procedures of the two politicians are seen as a test for South Africa’s ability to uphold the law, even against powerful politicians, 27 years after the ANC removed the leaders of Africa’s white minority from South to inaugurate democracy.
Zuma’s prison order has been seen as the most dramatic chapter in his journey from a revered anti-apartheid activist to a politician tainted with multiple accusations of sordid and corruption, all of which he denies.
As a member of the ANC while it was a liberation movement, Zuma was jailed by South Africa’s white minority leaders for his efforts to establish a state that would treat citizens equally.
Zuma, 79, denies widespread corruption and claims to be the victim of a political witch hunt.
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