Tafelberg Short: Nkandla - The end of Zuma?. City Press

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СКАЧАТЬ am proud of my roots.”

      However, in spite of the festivities and some subsequent and very pricey developments in the area, for normal residents not much changed. In September of 2009, Malibongwe Mhlongo of Nkandla wrote the following letter to City Press:

      As a rural, ordinary citizen of Nkandla, I still smell freedom approaching from a mile away but it always fails to arrive.

      We cannot claim parity while we as rural people are still subjected to poor health facilities and a scarcity of doctors.

      I wonder how many people have died because of poor service in rural communities.

      In our area, Nkungumathe, the health department provided what it calls a health post. There’s no ­activity in this place, except the nurse who comes to clean the building every day in order to register her name on the payroll.

      Patients still have to spend R50 on transport to Nkandla Hospital to collect pills and get check-ups.

      Rural people need access to a health service that is professional and user-friendly like any other ­citizen in South Africa. If this and any other social ills besetting the lives of rural people could be attended to we would enjoy freedom.

      We are hopeful that the government will soon pay attention to the need of the rural communities.

      In 2009, with the Zuma regime barely eight months into power, the Presidency confirmed in a statement that R65 million would be splurged on his Nkandla home, the bulk of which would be paid for by the taxpayer. New features would include a helicopter pad, military clinic and police station and security staff quarters. It, however, claimed Zuma would foot the costs of extending the palatial Nkandla residence, which already stood out like a sore thumb in the poor, rural neighbourhood.

      It seems that where Zuma is concerned, there are three things which should preclude each other, but yet run parallel and seem to have little impact on each other. They are:

      •The undying support of those who view him as a champion of the poor;

      •the large-scale upgrading of the presidential compound and niggling questions around financial and moral corruption; and

      •the endemic poverty of regular people in Nkandla (and other rural areas of South Africa).

      He courted controversy in 2010 when he did not declare his assets timeously. His lawyer Michael Hulley later said Zuma “does not hold any directorship, membership or shareholding in any company, either public or private”. He subsequently submitted a list of gifts, benefits and financial interests held or received.

      By the end of 2010, President Zuma was trying his best to stomp on the growing controversy about the enrichment of the first family, but was failing.

      While Young Communist League (YCL) chairperson David Masondo was smacked down for public criticism, his shorthand definition of first family empowerment as ZEE (Zuma Economic Empowerment) rather than BEE quickly worked its way into the national alphabet soup.

      The controversy around Nkandla did not happen in a vacuum, nor has it been President Zuma’s only crisis.

      On Thursday, 16 August 2012 there was a wildcat strike at a mine owned by Lonmin in the Marikana area. The event garnered international attention following a series of violent incidents between the South African Police Service, Lonmin security, the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and strikers, which resulted in the deaths of 44 people, the majority of whom were striking mineworkers. At least 78 additional workers were injured. In the preceding week, 10 people, including two policemen and two security guards, were killed.

      It was Zuma’s 9/11 moment. In response he ordered the Marikana Commission, headed by Ian Farlam, to investigate the incident.

      Then, in May 2013 members of a wealthy and politically connected Indian family, the Guptas, landed their privately chartered aircraft carrying 200 people on a restricted military air base while en route to a family wedding.

      The Gupta family had been repeatedly implicated in the bankrolling of Zuma family projects and their companies had employed two of Zuma’s children in high profile roles.

      Neither of these incidents is under discussion here, but “Guptagate” does speak to and echo “Nkandlagate” in many ways. It was the emergence of “number 1”.

      Diplomatic protocol chief Bruce Koloane said he acted “under pressure from number 1”, a direct reference to Zuma. Koloane was suspended; a government report said he used deception to obtain military landing permission.

      Writing in City Press, Njabulo Ndebele said:

      Like theoretical physicists, we can determine the nature and location of “Number 1” from the gravitational pull that reveals its presence. Its incorporeal presence is there in the entire Waterkloof Air Force base incident, but frustratingly invisible.

      Not only is “Number 1” a known unknown entity, it is also unnamable. When Ambassador Koloane refers to “Number 1” as a source of instructions, he expresses his fear of naming him.

      “Number 1”, through the practice of leaving no paper trail behind its actions, breeds conspiratorial illusions among those caught in carrying out its instructions. By leaving no trail of evidence, yet compulsively achieving its goals, it is a force that makes those acting on its behalf believe in the illusion that a phenomenon such as Nkandla, which is obvious to the human eye, can be rendered invisible through a device of law.

      The watershed moment for Zuma regarding Nkandla, came in September 2012, when City Press received an anonymous email with proof that the state did not only pay for security upgrades when it spent R250 million on President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla compound.

      The proof came in the form of correspondence by consecutive former Public Works ministers Geoff Doidge and Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde, and senior Public Works officials. It laid bare the frantic rush with which the project was pushed through – and that Zuma was kept abreast of the extent of the upgrades.

      A flurry of activity was triggered by a progress report prepared by the Durban office of Public Works for “Prestige Project A” – the name of the Nkandla upgrade – on 8 September 2010. Public Works’ call for “high-level intervention” resulted in Doidge attending an emergency progress meeting at Nkandla on 23 September 2010 where Doidge “pointed out that unnecessary delays are not acceptable”.

      Seventeen days later, Public Works reported on the progress of the upgrades. Work was still outstanding on fencing, the helipad, the building of a guardhouse, the relocation of two families, and the construction of tunnels and safe havens. At the end of that month, Zuma fired Doidge and appointed Mahlangu-Nkabinde in his place.

      Toward the end of 2012, City Press received documentation proving that the Public Works department had approved a R203 million budget in March 2011 for Prestige Project A.

      According to official departmental documentation, the scope of the work was divided as follows:

      •The “public (state’s) portion: R203 079 677.18”; and

      •The “private (owner’s) portion: R10 651 580.64”.

      It stated that the department had already spent R205 000 on electrical cabling and lightning protectors – something that Zuma was supposed to fund.

      “Please СКАЧАТЬ