John Steenhuisen, the leader of the main opposition political party has launched another attack on President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of devising a special remission program to allow former President Jacob Zuma’s freedom.
Ramaphosa, according to DA leader John Steenhuisen, abused his powers and the law by allowing Zuma to be released without returning to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence in the interest of the ANC.
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He stated that the sentence reduction program was employed this week specifically to save Zuma from returning to prison. He also said that they had utilized 10,000 other low-risk offenders as cover for Zuma’s release.
John Steenhuisen, speaking at the DA conference in Gauteng on Saturday, stated that the party would not tolerate the abuse of the law by anyone even those who are meant to protest it.
The DA leader claimed that while President Ramaphosa was subverting the rule of law, two DA mayors in Cape Town and Tshwane stood up for it this week.
He claimed that even Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis warned Police Minister Bheki Cele directly that he would not tolerate violence in the city which led to the end of a taxi strike in Cape Town on Thursday.
According to Steenhuisen, Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink stood up to striking workers after firing those involved in the illegal strike.
“While our mayors were out on the front-line defending the rule of law, our president was running away from it. In a cynical move he has abused his powers to once again put the ANC before the people of the country.
“But he has told us before so many times and I don’t know why it was not taken on face value when he said ‘I’d rather be a weak president than break up the ANC.’
“He showed that again this week, he’d rather break the rule of law, he’d rather subvert justice to be able to defend his party than to stand up for the Constitution and the people of South Africa.”
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Steenhuisen also said, “But the worst thing is that they weasel out of their obligations in terms of the rule of law by inventing some new remission programme for which Mr J.G. Zuma was the first recipient. In order to sneak him out of jail they had to put out 10 000 other incarcerated criminals around him.”
According to him, the recidivism rate is around 70%, which means that thousands of individuals sent free were likely to commit new crimes. However, Services for Justice and Corrections Ronald Lamola stated that they have been working on the sentence remission scheme since April which contradicts Steenhuisen’s claim.
