Former president Jacob Zuma appears to be backtracking on his stance that he is ready to go to jail to defy the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, as his foundation launched a full-throated attack on the commission's argument that he should face two years in jail for contempt.

In a statement released on Monday morning, the JG Zuma Foundation takes aim at the inquiry for suggesting, in its Constitutional Court contempt application against Zuma, that the country's highest court may suspend an order that he be immediately imprisoned "if the court is of the view that Mr Zuma should be afforded a final opportunity to comply with its order before he can be imprisoned".

According to the foundation, this order "was openly offered by [former] president Zuma's legal counsel and rejected by the commission" – an apparent claim that Zuma's lawyers had proposed that he could return to the inquiry to avoid jail time.

"While seeking to appear to maintain its hard unreasonable stance, the commission pretends this is its original remedy when everyone knows that it is an offer they rejected as they did with all responsible proposals," the statement adds.

This stance appears to stand in stark contrast to Zuma's previous statements that he is ready to go to jail to defy the inquiry.

Zuma's attorney, Eric Mabuza, declined to respond to questions about whether the former president would return to the commission to avoid being jailed, but the court papers filed by the inquiry's secretary, Professor Itumeleng Mosala, in support of its contempt case, make no mention of any such offer.

Media reports have previously claimed that Zuma's counsel had proposed that he would provide written statements to the inquiry on the hundreds of questions that it wishes to put to him on his nine-year term in office, but he has yet to make any formal submissions to the commission.

While it was Mosala, who argued for Zuma to face two years behind bars for multiple acts of contempt against the inquiry, the foundation accuses commission chairperson, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, for suggesting this jail term.

In court papers, Mosala argued the two-year sentence that the commission is seeking against Zuma was appropriate, because he can be shown to have committed multiple acts of contempt against the inquiry and would potentially face a four-and-a-half-year sentence, if he was tried in a criminal court.

Defying

Zuma stands accused of repeatedly defying the inquiry summons issued against him, walking out of the commission on 19 November and making false claims of corruption against the judiciary.

The foundation, however, argues that the 1947 Commissions Act – under which the crime of contempt is prosecuted – "talks about six months' imprisonment, or 55 pounds fine, not the two years' imprisonment that the Honourable Judge who is chairing the commission alone, suggests".

"The master has directed, it is clear that laws are being changed to deal with [former] president Zuma," the statement concludes, before again comparing the Constitutional Court proceedings against the former head of state to the apartheid state's targeted persecution of PAC leader Robert Sobukwe. 

Sobukwe's three-year jail term for protesting against racist pass laws was repeatedly and unlawfully extended by the apartheid government under the so-called "Sobukwe clause" – a law that was never used against anyone else. 

For Zuma and his foundation, the contempt proceedings launched against him for defying the Constitutional Court's ruling that he appear before the commission and answer questions that did not incriminate him "sounds like an old Apartheid regime in the hands of the Black Leaders in the Democratic South Africa".

As yet, Zuma has not filed a response to the inquiry's contempt application against him.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court has agreed to hear the contempt of court case on 25 March.