S.Africa: NO BLOODSHED: Former President Zuma is arrested quickly … taken TOTALLY BY SURPRISE!

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Here is the normal clap trap that the world’s media is putting out:

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Former South African President Jacob Zuma handed himself over to prison authorities early Thursday after a week-long standoff with the nation’s highest court that raised fears of violence by his supporters.

Zuma became the first South African leader to go to prison in the 27 years since apartheid ended with the election of Nelson Mandela in the nation’s first fully democratic vote.

South Africa’s Police Ministry confirmed Zuma was in custody just after the midnight deadline for the former president’s arrest.

Jacob Zuma, former president of South Africa, handed 15-month sentence for contempt of court

The Constitutional Court last week ordered Zuma jailed for 15 months for contempt after he refused to appear before a panel investigating corruption during his nine-year presidency.

Zuma, 79, had rejected the court’s sentence, arguing he was innocent and that his age and ill health would mean his likely death in custody.

Since the Constitutional Court imposed the sentence on June 29, hundreds of Zuma supporters, including former liberation fighters, had gathered outside his compound in rural KwaZulu-Natal province and vowed to defend him.

However, as a midnight deadline for his arrest approached Wednesday, most of the supporters had left the area. The party Zuma led, the African National Congress, on Tuesday urged support for the rule of law and condemned “counter-revolutionary calls for violence.”

In a final effort to avoid jail, Zuma’s lawyers wrote to the Constitutional Court on Wednesday night seeking a directive to stop the police from arresting him “pending the outcome of all legal processes,” according to the Jacob Zuma Foundation. A few hours later, Zuma’s spokesman Mzwanele Manyi announced that the former president had left his compound and would be turning himself in.

Zuma has long proclaimed his innocence to accusations of corruption. The Zondo Commission, which Zuma created under court order during his presidency and before which he refused to testify, was in response to a government report about the looting of state resources.

Zuma still has grass-roots support among the Zulu ethnic group in his native KwaZulu-Natal. He lost his ANC leadership to current President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2017 and resigned in 2018.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/07/jacob-zuma-arrest-south-africa/

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