IN THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEAL OF SOUTH AFRICA

From the available information in the reports, the conclusion reached by the MPAB is that the applicant is stable and does not qualify for medical parole according to the Act. [...] If, like here, a medical practitioner applies for medical parole for an inmate, the application must be sent to “the correctional medical practitioner” who must “make an evaluation of the application in accordance with the provisions of section 79 of the Act and make a recommendation”.27 The recommendation is then sent to the Board. [...] It is also because our courts have held that to allow administrators (such as the National Commissioner here) to act in this way, is to permit them to “arrogate powers to themselves or inflate their jurisdiction".32 The power to grant medical parole does not in law exist in the absence of the necessary jurisdictional facts, the critical medical fact depending on the recommendation of the Board.33. [...] The High Court correctly held that the National Commissioner impermissibly usurped the Board’s statutory role.41 The Board’s role, and the purpose of the amendment to section 79, is undermined if a politician can second-guess the Board’s specialist and independent determination. [...] It was irrational for the National Commissioner to grant Mr Zuma medical parole on the basis that the “full time medical care of the [South African Military Health Service]” in jail was inadequate, only for the solution out of jail to be the very same “full time medical care of the [South African Military Health Service]”.