Johannesburg -
President Jacob Zuma could be dragged into the R155-million damages claim against his Nkandla architect, Minenhle Makhanya, the Special Investigating Unit’s final report on the scandal reveals.
The SIU has also not cleared Zuma of alleged political interference in the course of the project.
While the SIU has chosen to go after Makhanya alone for the full amount in damages it believes the state suffered through his role in the project, “it would be for Makhanya to seek the joinder or intervention of third parties whom he may allege were unjustly enriched,” the report states, having already noted that Zuma or his family were enriched by increases in the value of the property thanks to the upgrades.
The report says implicit in the six claims the SIU has lodged against Makhanya in the Pietermaritzburg High Court is that “the value of the President’s, or the Zuma family’s, residential complex was enhanced.
“Clearly, to the extent that these claims are well founded, the president or his family were enriched,” the report says.
Explaining its decision to gun for Makhanya alone in its efforts to recoup losses to the state, the SIU says it could have chosen instead to institute separate claims against all of those who were enriched, relying on the principles of unjust enrichment.
But doing so would have allowed it to claim only the extent of the enrichment, as opposed to the full losses suffered by the state, and this could have been a lesser amount.
The route it has chosen puts the onus on Makhanya to identify and seek the joinder of third parties he might claim were unjustly enriched.
Rather than an unwieldy set of separate claims, this strategy would “ensure that there was one single action, before one judge, in which all the versions are set out and challenged”, the report says.
Tabled in Parliament yesterday after Zuma submitted it to Speaker Baleka Mbete on Thursday, the report also reveals that the SIU investigated the possibility of the president having interfered in the course of the project, on which a total R216 million has been spent to date.
This was after he was mentioned by various officials and in documents as having been involved in or having influenced some of the decision-making in the project, particularly in terms of the appointment of Makhanya and other consultants and contractors, as well as in the design and scope of some of the work.
Zuma was asked to respond to these allegations and denied, in a three-page letter to the SIU, that he had put any pressure on officials, other than expressing his frustration with the slow progress of the project and his distaste for the design of the bulletproof windows.
Zuma told the SIU if the officials had “laboured under the impression that the president was the origin of any undue pressure being brought to bear upon them in the discharge of their responsibilities, they were in a position to report such improper conduct”, according to the report.
“The president pointed out that he was not present at any of the meetings at which certain views, opinions and comments were ascribed to him,” the SIU report says.
Former public works minister Geoff Doidge and Deputy Minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu were also alleged by two officials to have threatened them in trying to force them to appoint certain consultants and contractors, by suggesting they might lose their jobs if their failure to do so endangered Zuma’s life.
Both denied this.
But the SIU report said it was “unable to accept or reject any of the versions” because it didn’t have the power to test them under cross-examination.
This was likely to happen when criminal and disciplinary cases were prosecuted against officials.
It had forwarded evidence to the prosecuting authorities and Public Works Department relating to possible criminal and disciplinary proceedings, and the report says if these are “properly prosecuted, the different role players will be subjected to cross-examination and a determination will be made on whose versions to accept”.
The report has already been forwarded to members of Parliament’s Nkandla ad hoc committee, who will consider it, along with Zuma’s response, the public protector’s report and that of the joint standing committee on intelligence.
The public protector’s report called on Zuma to repay a portion of the costs of non-security aspects of the upgrade, but he said the police minister must decide.
Saturday Star