A South African court handed a 15-year jail sentence to an aide of Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday in a trial analysts say may end Zuma’s hopes of becoming president. Schabir Shaik was convicted last week on charges he paid Zuma about 1.3 million rand ($194,700) to help advance his business interests and of seeking a bribe for Zuma from an arms firm in exchange for protection from a government probe.

Judge Hilary Squires handed Shaik mandatory 15 year sentences on each of two counts of corruption and three years on a third charge of graft, all to run concurrently. He also fined Shaik’s companies a total of nearly 4 million rand. Reading his much anticipated sentence, Squires said corruption undermined the achievements of the anti-apartheid struggle, dismissing mitigating arguments about Shaik’s role in the fight against racist rule in South Africa. “Far from carrying out the objectives of the (anti-apartheid) struggle, this whole saga represents a subversion of it,” Squires said in a ruling that, like his judgment last week, did not spare Zuma’s name.