Johannesburg - Could this be the start of another Spy Tapes saga? This is the question being asked as a government legal team went to court to prevent the publication of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s report on President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead.
A postponement was granted on Friday for an interdict delaying the release of the report.
But while postponement only buys the authorities a week, it could be the start of efforts to make wholesale changes after Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said the report contained “a plethora” of security breaches.
Pressure on Madonsela has been building as she prepared to release her report, with the ANC questioning her objectivity and, in an unrelated statement in Parliament on Thursday, slamming another report of hers as “embarrassing”.
Madonsela was seemingly unfazed by an attack by ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe on Monday in which he said earlier comments by Madonsela threw her neutrality into doubt and suggested she was “protecting interests of a particular section of society”.
He was responding to an interview in which the public protector said some might be “disappointed” by her report “because we work with the law”.
“If the law authorised them to spend that money‚ I may disagree in my personal view and say this shouldn’t have happened‚ but if the law allows it‚ you can just say: ‘Please change the law’‚” she reportedly told the Sunday Tribune, sister publication of Saturday Star.
Mantashe said this, and her handing of the report to organs of the security cluster, but not Zuma, “suggest that the president is guilty even before the report is released officially”.
Madonsela had “positioned the report in a manner that will work on the public psyche in a particular manner”, Mantashe said.
Madonsela responded by assuring citizens of her office’s “continued independence and impartiality”.
“We conduct all of our investigations and, where appropriate, prepare reports without fear, favour or prejudice,” she said.
On Thursday, political parties across the spectrum rejected Madonsela’s suggestion that Independent Electoral Commission chairwoman Pansy Tlakula’s role in the procurement of a new headquarters for the commission, and her comments on Madonsela’s findings against her, be referred to the Electoral Court.
Adopting the report of a committee established to consider Madonsela’s request, MPs said it would be unconstitutional and unlawful to comply.
ANC MP Johnny de Lange was scathing of Madonsela’s understanding of Parliament.
Madonsela’s suggestion that the Speaker should take action, in consultation with the IEC, flew in the face of the principle of the separation of powers, De Lange said.
“Not even a class one kid would make a suggestion like that. It just breaks every suggestion of the separation of powers.”
The quality of Madonsela’s report was “embarrassing”, De Lange said.
Meanwhile, in a series of written replies to parliamentary questions this week, ministers in the security cluster denied they had ever tried to persuade Madonsela to drop the Nkandla investigation.
This follows a Sunday Times report in September that the ministers had leaned on Madonsela to drop the probe.
An internal report on Nkandla commissioned by Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi has yet to be made public after he said the contents were classified as they contained details of security arrangements at the president’s home.
It was referred to the secretive joint standing committee on intelligence so security aspects could be removed before it was made public, but there has been no update on progress.
DA representatives on the committee walked out of a meeting in August in protest at the processing of the report behind closed doors.
At a subsequent briefing where she announced the party had approached the Western Cape High Court for an order compelling Nxesi to hand over the Public Works report, DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko said the committee had finished its work on the matter and the DA members had returned.
She said on Friday the security cluster’s interdict application was a “delaying tactic and like the numerous delays encountered in the Spy Tapes case, it will be at the expense of the taxpayer”.
Zuma’s four-year battle to prevent the release of the “Spy Tapes” has so far cost at least R3.6m.
Saturday Star