Jacob Zuma's former financial adviser, jailed businessman Schabir Shaik, could be home within months.
Shaik, convicted on two counts of corruption and one of fraud, based on evidence of a corrupt relationship between himself and Zuma, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2005.
In the two years and three months that he has been in jail, he has spent most of the time in either private or prison hospitals due to high blood pressure, depression and chest pains, which have been claimed to be life threatening.
It appears that a section in the Criminal Procedure Act, which formed part of a ruling in the landmark 2007 Supreme Court of Appeal case of David Ashley Price versus the Minister of Correctional Services, could assist in Shaik's release.
In the judgment, the court ruled that section 276A of the Criminal Procedure Act allowed for the conversion of imprisonment into correctional supervision in a case where a person had been sentenced to imprisonment for a period exceeding five years but the date of release was not more than five years in the future, and if the commissioner or a parole board was of the opinion that the person was fit to be subjected to correctional supervision.
The act allows for an application to the clerk or registrar of the court for the prisoner to appear before a court to reconsider the sentence.
In Shaik's case, his earliest date of release would be seven-and-a-half years.
He has already served two years and three months of the 15-year sentence, and in three months he would have served two-and-a-half years, meaning his earliest date of release would be less than five years "in the future".
Sign up with Google
