Parliament – The National Assembly on Tuesday adopted a report endorsing the police minister’s exonoration of President Jacob Zuma in the Nkandka scandal to which the opposition said they will go to court to enforce Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s finding that he should refund the State for the security upgrade gone wrong.
The report, compiled by the third parliamentary ad hoc committee tasked with reports on Nkandla, was approved by 198 votes to 93.
All opposition parties barring the African People’s Convention voted against the report, which found that all luxuries added to the president’s private rural home served a vital security purpose, including a swimming pool that doubles up as a reservoir for fire fighting.
“It has a shallow end for small fires and a deep end for big fires. It is a swimming pool,” ironised the Freedom Front Plus’s Corne Mulder in the debate on the report.
James Selfe, the chairman of the Democratic Alliance’s federal executive, implored ANC MPs to vote against the report because, he argued, the Nkandla security upgrade that cost the taxpayer more than R215 million “represents everything that is bad and corrupt and hollow about South Africa”.
Selfe warned that should the ANC not heed his call, the opposition would collectively challenge Parliament’s handling of the matter because it was irrational and unlawful.
The opposition’s argument is based on the contention that the executive cannot, by law, flout the findings of the Public Protector.
ANC MP Francois Beukman countered that the committee could not revisit Madonsela’s report - which found that Zuma had unduly benefitted from the work done at Nkandla - as her report had fallen under the mandate of the second ad hoc committee on Nkandla, which concluded its work late last year.
The opposition boycotted that committee after the ANC majority serving on it proved deaf to their calls to ask Madonsela to appear before it to expand on her findings. The ruling party did the same when the call came again in the third committee, but Selfe said this time the opposition participated because it had received legal advice to ‘”exhaust all domestic options” before proceeding to court.
The United Democratic Movement’s Nqabayomzi Kwankwa in his speech stressed that the opposition’s participation this time should in no way be seen as legitimising the process that spawned the report to Parliament. Beukman expressed the hope, as has Police Minister Nathi Nhleko, that this would bring an end to more than five years of polemic over the president’s home.
African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart said the only action that would have this effect is if Zuma agreed to repay a portion of the money spent at Nkandla,
“Determine a relatively small amount, pay it and the matter will go away.”
Opposition leader Mmusi Maimane said his party would now take the matter to the Western Cape High Court.
This came after the opposition submitted an amendment which sought to rewrite Nhleko’s findings. This was put to the vote, and defeated by 200 hands to 92.
ANA