The meaning of Jacob Zuma’s 15-month prison sentence

after his election to the presidency had brought an end to white rule, Nelson Mandela spoke to the assembled judges at the opening of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. “We expect you to stand on guard not only against direct assault on the principles of the constitution,” he said, “but against insidious corrosion.”Since then no one has done more to corrode the institutional pillars of post-apartheid South Africa than Jacob Zuma. In the 2000s he was accused of taking bribes from a French arms company while deputy president; he spoke of how the ruling African National Congress () was “more important” than the constitution. After he became president in 2009 his reign was associated with the wholesale looting of public funds and the demolition of the parts of the state meant to stop graft.