Police ministry awaits Concourt directive before arresting Jacob Zuma

The police ministry says it will wait for a directive from the Constitutional Court on whether to arrest former president Jacob Zuma.

This after the Pietermaritzburg high court reserved judgment in Zuma’s application for a stay of the warrant. Judgment will be handed down on Friday.

Zuma’s application came after a Constitutional Court judgment which sentenced him to 15 months in prison after it found him guilty of contempt of court — this after the former statesman refused to obey the apex court's order that he appear before the state capture commission.

THE LAW EXPLAINED | Will Jacob Zuma report to police on Wednesday or be arrested?

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The court gave Zuma five days to hand himself over (which expired on Sunday), or be arrested by the end of Wednesday.

Police minister Bheki Cele wrote to the apex court, saying his department would not enact the order to arrest Zuma pending the outcome of legal challenges to the same court’s ruling — unless the court directed otherwise.

Asked on Tuesday evening if the ministry would be making the arrest given Tuesday's court events, spokesperson Lirandzu Themba told TimesLIVE: “We wrote to the Constitutional Court to seek clarity on whether we should execute the arrest or wait for the litigation processes including the PMB [Pietermaritzburg high court] and the Constitutional Court on the 12th. We await that directive from the Concourt.”

TimesLIVE