Former President Jacob Zuma should return to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. That is the upshot of a Constitutional Court ruling on Thursday which rejected the prisons commissioner's application for leave to appeal against a previous rejection from the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Former President Jacob Zuma has been a free man for just under two years -- but his days of liberty may be numbered.

There are "no reasonable prospects of success" in appealing against a ruling that he should return to prison after being unlawfully released early on medical parole in September 2021, ruled the Constitutional Court on Thursday.

The application had been brought on behalf of the National Commissioner of Correctional Services, previously found to have erred in releasing Zuma after just two months of imprisonment. The apex court did not hear arguments in the matter, with a 10-judge Bench dismissing the prisons commissioner's application in just one paragraph.

Correctional Services had approached the Constitutional Court after Zuma was smacked down by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in November 2022. But Thursday's ruling means that the SCA's findings now hold.

The critical passage from that November judgment reads as follows:

"Once the order in this appeal is handed down, Mr Zuma's position as it was prior to his release on medical parole will be reinstated. In other words, Mr Zuma, in law, has not finished serving his sentence. He must return to the Escourt Correctional Centre to do...