Zuma was granted compassionate leave as he was considered a short-term, low-risk inmate, the department of correctional services said in a statement. Zuma was not required to wear an offenders’ uniform outside prison walls, it said.
“He was accompanied by correctional officers supported by law enforcement agencies. And we are to confirm that he has returned back to the Estcourt correctional facility as we speak,” cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told a news conference on Thursday afternoon.
Zuma, 79, was sentenced last month for defying a constitutional court order to give evidence at an inquiry investigating high-level corruption during his nine years in office until 2018.
Protests by his supporters broke out when Zuma handed himself over and escalated into riots involving looting and arson that President Cyril Ramaphosa has described as an “insurrection”.
The unrest swept across Kwa-Zulu Natal and spread to the country’s economic heartland where Johannesburg is located. Ntshavheni said the death toll had risen to 337. read more
Thousands of soldiers were deployed to help quell the violence, among the worst since the governing African National Congress won South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 to replace white minority rule.
