Durban - President Jacob Zuma’s architect Minenhle Makhanya wants all the contractors involved in the upgrade of the President’s Nkandla home to be his co-defendants against the R155 million Special Investigation Unit (SIU) civil claim.
According to the SIU report, the Department of Public Works (DPW) suffered a loss of more than R155m “as a result of unlawful, wrongful and/or negligent conduct and actions of Makhanya which the SIU is entitled to recover from him”.
The SIU is accusing him of over-designing the security upgrades and overpaying himself for his roles as an architect and project manager.
Makhanya’s lawyer Barnabas Xulu said they would be in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Friday to file the papers that would enable his client to join forces with the SANDF, the SAPS and the 14 contractors involved.
“It wouldn’t be fair to ask for Makhanya to answer for all the contractors when he didn’t appoint them or pay them. DPW appointed the contractors and paid them directly,” Xulu said.
He said the contractors needed to come forward and answer to the allegations that “some of the work was not done and some was not per the correct specifications”.
“They (the contractors) are the ones who know what was required from them as per their contract so they are the ones who know if they were over/underpaid for the services they rendered,” said Xulu.
He also planned to pursue the declaration of secrecy documents which he applied for from the SIU.
He said he was surprised that the SIU had said the documents were irrelevant.
“Those documents are the decider on whether parties are able to talk about the work they did in Nkandla or not. If people don’t know the consequences of talking about it, then they won’t speak because they don’t want to risk going to jail.”
Makhanya also wants the SAPS and SANDF reports on the assessment performed by them to be declassified and handed to his legal team as he needs them to finalise his plea.
One of the contractors, Elliot Magubane, denied any knowledge of Makhanya’s plans for a co-defence. His company was appointed in June 2011 to do the R10m electronic security systems installation.
The SIU report also blamed Public Works officials for ceding their powers to outsideparties and abdicating their responsibilities.
“The result is that a project that could have been undertaken at a cost of some R60.6m ended up costing R216m.”
The department is a second defendant in the R155m claim.
The SIU report also revealed that work stopped in 2012 when an investigation was launched.
The Mercury