Johannesburg - The battle to recover the millions spent on President Jacob Zuma’s private residence has shifted into top gear.
The Sunday Independent can disclose that:
* Lawyers representing principal Nkandla resident architect Minenhle Makhanya have been granted read-only access to Zuma’s confidential submission to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
* The full picture of contractors who benefited from the R246-million spent is starting to emerge.
Lawyers for Makhanya, who has been slapped with a R155m bill by the SIU, said they would go through Zuma’s submission on Wednesday.
“We are happy to be given this waiver by the SIU and if we can get all the 16 parties involved to co-operate with us, the process will move much quicker,” said lawyer Barnabas Xulu.
Makhanya’s lawyers had also identified at least 16 companies they want to join them in a bid to extricate Makhanya from the lawsuit. However, some of the companies had either folded or their directors could not be traced, said Xulu.
The SIU is trying to recover R155m from Makhanya, as the “principal agent” allegedly responsible for inflating the cost of Zuma’s security upgrade.
Xulu said the delay in filing papers in the Pietermaritzburg High Court was due to logistic challenges among which were “the difficulties to access addresses for all the companies we want to join in the replying affidavit”. Many had untraceable addresses; some others had since been liquidated.
Xulu said their application also focused on compelling the SIU to give them access to classified documents that should form part of their defence.
“However, we are satisfied that we have been given that waiver by the SIU, so all the parties involved will have access to these classified documents where we will inspect them. The difficulty now comes with the fact that we can only inspect the documents, not remove them. Now how is it going to be possible to expedite the process in the light of the time we were given?…
”So these have been the challenges, if it was the Department of Public Works only, things would have been much, much easier, but we are dealing with firms we cannot easily trace,” he said.
Thandeka Nene, owner of Pietermaritzburg-based Bonelela Construction, is one of the people Makhanya wants to haul before court.
Nene confirmed this yesterday but refused to comment further on the issue. She would not say whether she would join the application. Her firm is believed to have made at least R80m from the project.
Another contractor targeted by Makhanya’s lawyers is Pamela Mfeka, who made R60m. While Mfeka could not be reached this week, she was reported to have said her hands were clean.
It is not clear at this stage whether the State will focus all its attention on Makhanya alone.
Makhanya was the first in a series of people and companies named by the SIU in papers against whom it is understood to be preparing to act.
In papers, SIU KwaZulu-Natal senior forensic lawyer Ashish Gosai said Makhanya's appointment, on the recommendation of public works project manager Jean Rindel and then director-general Solly Malebye on August 27, 2009, was unlawful and invalid as there was no open tender process around it.
Meanwhile, the Nkandla ad hoc committee formed to look and consider various report relating to Nkandla collapsed this week.
The DA, EFF, FF+, IFP and the ACDP all bombed out of the committee and effectively terminated their participation in the committee process.
Mmusi Maimane, DA parliamentary leader, said the entire opposition refused to be part of a process that was being hijacked and manipulated by the ANC to protect Zuma from accountability at all costs.
“The opposition will not legitimise this blatant undermining of the constitution, for the protection of one man,” he said.
IFP’s Narend Singh said the withdrawal was motivated by the ANC’s stubborn refusal to entertain any legal opinion on the binding effect of the constitutionally enshrined powers of the public protector to prescribe remedial action, and their refusal to entertain the summons of any person to appear before the committee.
“The IFP, already in the fourth Parliament, had indicated it wanted the reports’ authors as well as Zuma, to be invited to answer questions and provide clarity on certain issues relating to Nkandla,” he said.
Sunday Independent