Johannesburg - Public Protector Thuli Madonsela says the offer by a group of people to pay part of the Nkandla expenses is not enough to absolve President Jacob Zuma from his responsibilities.
Madonsela said this on Tuesday night after delivering a public lecture at the University of Limpopo’s Turfloop campus.
Her remarks were directed at last week’s offer by a Durban group that wrote to Parliament, offering to settle money which was unduly spent on Zuma’s private home in Nkandla.
Madonsela said the group, which apparently consisted mainly of lawyers, had missed the point.
The basic issue about the Nkandla debacle was not about money, but related to Zuma’s accountability as head of state.
“If these lawyers are coming in to deal with the money, that still does not deal with the executive members’ ethics because it divorces the money from accountability,” she said.
Madonsela said Zuma had the responsibility, as head of the executive, to stop the excessive expenditure.
“It was about the president looking at what he could have done after hearing the officials had exceeded their powers because that happened in 2009 and the Presidency issued a statement (then) that was saying there is no wrongdoing,” she said, adding that the Presidency should have investigated the ballooning expenditure before issuing a statement in 2009.
Madonsela stopped short of calling on Zuma to apologise. “It’s not compensation, it’s ‘sorry money’, so to speak. It’s similar to sorry money, that’s why the amount of money (Zuma has to pay) is not included in the report.”
The Star