Parliament - Expecting President Jacob Zuma to know everything about the security upgrades at his rural Nkandla homestead was like requiring DA leader Mmusi Maimane to know about the drugs in his church, argued ANC deputy chief whip Doris Dlakude.
“People plant things…” she said during the sitting of the special parliamentary Nkandla committee, which on Wednesday heard from Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko and Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi on the R215 million taxpayer-funded security upgrades.
Dlakude’s comment, relating to a tabloid report on the church where Maimane preaches, came towards the end of almost three hours of polite scrapping around minutiae and verbal exchanges.
In many ways it was a replay of political battle lines drawn long ago at Wednesday’s meeting of the committee set up to consider Nhleko’s report absolving the president from any possible repayments, as everything built was security-related, including the cattle kraal, swimming pool, amphitheatre and visitors’ centre.
Late last year, an earlier Nkandla committee report clearing Zuma of any involvement was adopted by the National Assembly on the back of the ANC majority in the House. The report blamed officials for excessive costs and requested a further assessment of whether the president was indeed secured.
Opposition parties opposed the report in the House; they had walked out of the committee after unsuccessful requests for the president and public protector to brief it.
The ANC has drawn on the 2014 Special Investigating Unit (SIU) probe findings blaming officials for exorbitant cost escalations – the unit has brought a civil claim for R155m against architect Minenhle Makhanya to recoup losses caused by negligence.
An earlier interministerial task team blamed officials for exorbitant costs and maintained everything constructed were security features. The subsequent joint standing committee on intelligence report adopted this view, adding that security was necessary because of high crime levels and a history of political assassinations.
Meanwhile, opposition parties are supporting the public protector’s finding that Zuma and his family had “unduly” benefited and should repay a reasonable percentage of the non-security comfort like the cattle kraal, swimming pool, amphitheatre and visitors’ centre.
The EFF, which hasn’t participated in the committee, unlike other opposition parties, has raised the repayment through its “pay back the money” fracas in the House several times. And at next Thursday’s presidential question time, EFF leader Julius Malema will, for the second time in a year, ask Zuma about repaying money, according to the official question paper.
On Wednesday, Nhleko said the president couldn’t be blamed when officials used his name to “move projects along”.
He endorsed the SIU’s view that “there appears to be a disturbing tendency to invoke the name of the president to move the project along and to influence decisions…”
Nhleko raised his previous experience as a public servant and administrator to add: “I’ve witnessed and seen this.”
He dismissed Maimane’s claims that officials again were made scapegoats as happened in the 2013 landing at the military Waterkloof Air Force Base of a private jet transporting guests for a family wedding of the politically connected Gupta family.
In the wake of that debacle, state protocol chief Bruce Koloane, who reportedly claimed the involvement of “Number 1” in SMSes, was demoted, but subsequently appointed as South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands. After military charges were withdrawn against four air base officials, the matter of the SMSes was the subject of civil litigation.
Nhleko said it wasn’t his job to investigate anything related to airfields. Instead, he repeatedly referred to the SIU finding that a senior superintendent, who named the president in a letter regarding construction at Nkandla, had said this was “an invention”.
That letter emerged in last week’s committee oversight visit to Nkandla and meetings at the KwaZulu-Natal legislature. In the letter, the senior superintendent – equivalent to a colonel, following the 2010 return to military-style ranks, or a deputy director in the public service – said that “by instruction of the state president, President Zuma, the existing house and Nkandla which accommodate SAPS members must be converted as part of the president’s household”.
However, Nhleko admitted no action had been taken as part of “consequence management” against the police official since the SIU issued its report in September last year.
The police minister and MPs frequently talked past each other.
When IFP MP Narend Singh asked how it was possible that 40 percent of the R135.2m spent on SAPS and SANDF accommodation was paid to consultants, Nhleko responded he had already told the committee about this consultancy fee during last week’s briefing during the committee’s oversight visit.
It was the public works minister who answered by saying the maximum industry norm for consultancy fees was 18 percent, and this shouldn’t have been exceeded.
“That’s why we are charging people,” he added.
Nxesi also pointed out that Public Works had referred three top national department officials and a contractor for prosecution and instituted disciplinary action against 12 officials, while 14 contractors were referred to the South African Revenue Service for fraudulent and/or invalid tax certificates.
“There is no evidence that the president had interfered. Any insinuation (to this effect) is misplaced,” Nxesi said.
Political Bureau