Former President Jacob Zuma did not go to prison because he was found guilty of corruption. He did not go to prison after a criminal trial, after evidence was tested, or after witnesses were cross examined. He went to prison because the state, in particular Judge Khampepe, decided to assert its authority through him.
His 15 month sentence for contempt of court was not justice in the classical legal sense; it was a political act wrapped in constitutional language. That reality must be confronted honestly. The Zondo Commission was a commission of inquiry, not a court of law.
Its mandate was investigative, not punitive. Yet Zuma’s refusal to appear before it was transformed into a constitutional emergency. The Constitutional Court bypassed ordinary procedural safeguards and imposed a direct custodial sentence.
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Zuma was denied the incremental protections normally afforded to any accused person. There was no proportionality, no graduated sanction, no patience. Supporters of the judgment claim it defended the Constitution.
Section 1 of the Constitution enshrines the rule of law. Section 9 guarantees equality. When one man is punished swiftly and harshly to “send a message,” while others are handled gently, those guarantees ring hollow.
Zuma became a symbol, not a defendant. His imprisonment was designed to restore institutional credibility after years of state failure. In that sense, the judgment was political.
It was about power, not principle. Shamilla Batohi, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, occupies one of the most powerful offices created by the Constitution. Section 179 requires the NPA to act “without fear, favour or prejudice.” That obligation applies not only to prosecutions but to leadership, accountability, and public explanation.
Batohi is not above the Constitution she is sworn to uphold. Her supporters regularly invoke her impressive résumé: senior roles in the Scorpions, Director of Public Prosecutions in KwaZulu Natal, and nearly a decade as a senior legal adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. These credentials are used as a shield, as if experience confers immunity.
It does not. Under Batohi’s leadership, the NPA has presided over years of prosecutorial paralysis in some of the most serious matters arising from state capture. High profile cases have stalled, collapsed, or never materialised.
While Zuma was jailed without a corruption conviction, others implicated in detailed allegations have faced endless delays or no consequences at all. This is selective urgency masquerading as prudence. When Zuma defied the Commission, the state acted with breathtaking speed and severity.
When Batohi presides over institutional failure, the response is silence, patience, and protection. No commission summons. No constitutional outrage.
No dramatic insistence that accountability is non negotiable. That double standard is fatal to the rule of law. If defiance of a commission amounts to defiance of the Constitution, as the Court insisted in Zuma’s case, then avoidance of accountability by the head of the NPA is equally constitutionally offensive.
Either the principle applies universally, or it was never a principle at all. Defenders argue that questioning Batohi undermines the NPA. This argument is dishonest.
A prosecuting authority that cannot account for its failures is not independent, it is unanswerable. Zuma was given no indulgence. No benefit of doubt.
No extended courtesy. The law came down hard, fast, and publicly. If Batohi is spared similar scrutiny, then Zuma’s supporters were right: his punishment was political, not principled.
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