Parliament - Opposition parties have warned it is not the end of the road for President Jacob Zuma after the National Treasury said he should pay back R7.8 million for non-security upgrades at his Nkandla home.
Analysts also cautioned on Monday that this was not the end of the road for him.
But the quantity surveyors who helped the Treasury determine the R7.8m to be paid by Zuma for non-security upgrades at Nkandla were unable to make a precise cost analysis because there was no bill of quantities to work from and the drawings supplied were incomplete and in some cases didn’t match what was actually built.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said they were complying with the directive of the Constitutional Court on March 31 that Zuma must pay back a reasonable portion for non-security features.
Gordhan assigned two firms of quantity surveyors to determine the costs for Zuma.
The report of the Treasury to the Constitutional Court is in line with the order of March 31 that it should determine the reasonable costs of the non-security items listed in Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s Nkandla report and the reasonable percentage of this to be paid by Zuma.
But the design, construction and engineering drawings supplied by Public Works “did not include the final ‘as built’ drawings, neither did any of the information received include structural drawings, wet surfaces, civil, electrical or mechanical information or any related specifications”, the Treasury said.
“In addition, no bill of quantities was provided to assist in the determination of the reasonable costs incurred in building the said facilities,” the report said.
Madonsela encountered similar difficulties in her investigation at Nkandla in accessing documents, in particular, a list of items for Zuma’s personal account that had been drawn up at the request of then-deputy minister for public works Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, which subsequently vanished.
The lack of complete drawings for the project appears to confirm the extent to which Zuma’s architect Minenhle Makhanya made up the scope of the work as he went along.
The plan for the visitors’ centre, for example, showed only a single-storey building, but the finished article was a double-storey facility, the bottom floor of which is used by the SAPS as a control centre.
The Treasury submitted the reports of the two firms – one of which put the costs in 2009 terms at R6.85m and the other which put it at R8.64m – to a moderating panel comprising experts from the SA Institute of Civil Engineering and the Association of SA Quantity Surveyors, which found the reasonable costs to be R8.88m.
However, taking into account the use of the bottom floor of the visitors’ centre by SAPS, the Treasury determined that Zuma should pay 87.94% of the total, or R7.814m.
The Presidency said it was studying the report and would comment later.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane said Zuma should pay this amount personally and “without delay”.
He vowed that his party would “not relent in ensuring that all of those who were complicit in the Nkandla corruption are brought to book so that we can retrieve every cent unduly spent”.
IFP MP Narend Singh said the Treasury should provide “a full breakdown… of how this amount was arrived at, as it does seem somewhat trivial when compared with the overall expenditure incurred at Nkandla”.
Steve Swart of the ACDP said the R7.8m was small compared to the R246m used to upgrade the house.
They wanted to know how the Treasury arrived at the figure.
“It seems to be on the low side considering that we were talking about R250m,” Swart said.
“I still believe the president needs to be held accountable that he did not comply with his constitutional duty,” he said.
Susan Booysen of Wits University said pressure would continue to mount on Zuma to go because the public believes this was a small amount compared to the R246m spent at Nkandla.
This figure looked like a bargain for Zuma, she said.
“I cannot imagine this is the end of the story.”
The ConCourt still has to consider the Treasury report before confirming the sum Zuma must pay.
Political Bureau