Zuma: Enemy of the poor

There was an uproar in the National Assembly on Tuesday when the opposition attacked President Jacob Zuma over the R203-million spending on his home in Nkandla and accused him of failing to respect and uphold the constitution.

Mr Zuma has defended the immense spending on the renovations, saying it was not his decision, but that of the Department of Public Works.

The opposition members’ remarks triggered numerous complaints from the African National Congress benches, particularly from chief whip Mathole Motshekga, who said statements had to be accurate.

Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Anchen Dreyer got the ball rolling when she charged that "Mr Zuma was spending R203-million of hard-earned taxpayers’ money on his private home in Nkandla".

"We can ask ourselves what else could be done with that money," she said, adding that for R15,000 a day, Mr Zuma could have hired thousands of trucks to deliver textbooks to schools in Limpopo.

She was immediately interrupted by Mr Motshekga, who said Mr Zuma was not in charge of the Department of Public Works.

His point of order did not find favour with deputy speaker Nomaindia Mfeketo.

Ms Dreyer added that the DA would have used the money to pay the salaries of teachers and build Reconstruction and Development Programme houses.

"This is the difference between the voter-sensitive DA and the self-enriching authoritarian and corrupt clique of President Zuma, who is the enemy of poor people," she said.

Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi said that if anybody was to blame for the Nkandla renovations it was the government’s security departments and his department - and not Mr Zuma.

He said he was not prepared to play politics with the security of the president and again cited the apartheid-era National Key Points Act as his justification for investigating how newspapers got access to the information on Nkandla.

- iafrica