{"id":30065,"date":"2016-11-06T00:21:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T00:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-africa-s-zuma-not-afraid-of-jail-amid\/"},"modified":"2016-11-06T00:21:41","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T00:21:41","slug":"south-africa-s-zuma-not-afraid-of-jail-amid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-africa-s-zuma-not-afraid-of-jail-amid\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s Zuma &#8216;not afraid of jail&#8217; amid corruption accusations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africa&#8217;s embattled President Jacob Zuma has said he is not scared of going to prison, days after an investigation found evidence of possible government corruption.}<\/p>\n<p>This was his first public appearance since an anti-corruption report asked for a judicial inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Zuma, 74, is accused of an improper relationship with wealthy businessmen. He denies any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of people took to the streets on Wednesday demanding his resignation.<br \/>\nThe 355-page report entitled State of Capture focused on allegations that Mr Zuma allowed the Guptas, a wealthy Indian business family close to the president, to influence cabinet appointments.<\/p>\n<p>The Gupta brothers have not commented, but they have previously denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Zuma, who spent 10 years as a political prisoner on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela during apartheid (white minority rule), told a cheering crowd in his home province of Kwa-Zulu Natal: &#8220;I&#8217;m not afraid of jail. I&#8217;ve been to jail during the struggle.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no longer any space for democratic debate. The only space there is for court arguments by lawyers. That&#8217;s not democracy,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Zuma, who is also the leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC), has been dogged by corruption allegations for more than a decade. He had tried to block the release of the report, but dropped his court bid.<\/p>\n<p>He faces a vote of no confidence in parliament next week. He survived two similar votes earlier this year.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-16204 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_92290730_00a421a3-a0b6-43b8-8437-22548514b64e.jpg\" alt=\"Mr Zuma has faced numerous corruption accusations\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africa&#8217;s embattled President Jacob Zuma has said he is not scared of going to prison, days after an investigation found evidence of possible government corruption.} This was his first public appearance since an anti-corruption report asked for a judicial inquiry. Mr Zuma, 74, is accused of an improper relationship with wealthy businessmen. He denies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30065"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30065"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}