Jacob Zuma: South Africa’s former president hands himself over to police

Jacob Zuma, former South Africa’s president, turned himself over to police early Thursday to begin serving a 15-month jail term.

Just minutes before the midnight deadline for police to arrest him, Zuma left his Nkandla home in a convoy of vehicles.

A source said Zuma decided to hand himself over to authorities to obey the order from the country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, that he should serve a prison term for contempt of Court.

“President Zuma has decided to comply with the incarceration order. He is on his way to hand himself into a Correctional Services Facility in KZN (KwaZulu-Natal province),” said a tweet posted by the Zuma Foundation.

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Police had earlier warned that they were prepared to arrest him if he did not hand himself in by midnight.

Zuma, 79, was handed the jail term last week after he failed to attend a corruption inquiry.

The sentencing sparked an unprecedented legal drama in South Africa, which has never seen a former president jailed before.

The former president was sentenced on 29 June for defying an instruction to give evidence at an inquiry into corruption during his nine years in power. He had testified only once at the inquiry into an alleged influential politician’s collaboration with businessmen to siphoned state assets.