The man who has offered to pay back what President Jacob Zuma owes to the public for his role in the Nkandla debacle is a struggling wannabe filmmaker who lives with his parents.
Vumelani Mchunu, who gained instant fame when a letter he wrote to parliament's ad hoc committee was made public on Thursday, has no stable job and the office address he gave for his Public Members Unit Team (PMUT) does not exist.
The 33-year-old was featured on radio shows and quoted by various newspapers on Thursday and Friday after he wrote to parliament saying the PMUT, which he purports to chair, "will pay that money back on behalf of the president".
But it has now emerged that not only is the PMUT's address - which is given as 250 Avoca Hills in Durban - fictitious, it is also an "unregistered ... non-profit organisation".
Mchunu on Friday admitted that his organisation was unregistered and told the Sunday Times that he did not personally know Zuma.
He said he only had a chance meeting with the president in 2008 when he worked as a production assistant in a documentary about KwaMashu township, outside Durban.
Zuma had been interviewed for the documentary.
The Sunday Times tracked Mchunu down to KwaMashu where his neighbours laughed when told of his offer to pay the millions "owed" by Zuma while his contemporaries in film-making dismissed him as an "attention seeker".
His father's house on Nhlangakazi Road, in D-Section, is a modestly renovated township house - with a single garage still under construction - which showed no visible signs of a well-to-do family.
There was no one at home.
Said a neighbour: "He lives here. That's his father's house, but he also spends time in H-Section ... He's married now."
When he registered his seemingly dormant company, VumVum Media, in 2011, Mchunu gave the Nhlangakazi Road address as his residential address.
Even Edmund Mhlongo, the founder of the KwaMashu Community Advancement Projects (K-Cap) - where Mchunu learnt video production in 2004 - had a good laugh when he heard about the story.
"He got married last year or thereabouts ... I don't know him as a businessman. I know him as a struggling young man who works for production companies and gets jobs here and there ... maybe his wife is a millionaire," said Mhlongo.
It all started with two letters which were sent to the parliamentary committee set up to consider the four reports on Nkandla - including that of public protector Thuli Madonsela, the government task team's report, the Special Investigating Unit report and Zuma's response to Madonsela.
The one letter was written by a group of Durban lawyers who asked for Madonsela to be removed from her position, alleging that her report had been "littered with flaws, inaccuracies, contradictions and inexcusable errors". The second letter came from Mchunu, pledging to put an end to the president's woes and "pay that money back on behalf of ... Zuma".
Zuma is under pressure from opposition parties to repay a portion of the R246-million in taxpayers money which was used to upgrade his Nkandla homestead.
Interview
Mchunu changed his mind after he had initially agreed to a face-to-face interview.
He reluctantly gave a telephonic interview - describing himself as "self-employed".
Asked about the Avoca Hills address he gave as belonging to his organisation, he said: "Don't worry about that, my brother, write what we are telling you".
Asked if he stayed at his parents' house, Mchunu said: "Why do you want to know where I stay ... this thing about where we stay and our companies is not relevant to what we are raising in our letter to parliament."
Mchunu said they were a "group" of self-employed and unemployed youth who had no current sponsors for the "youth empowerment projects" they purportedly ran.
More importantly, he admitted that they did not have the money to repay Zuma's debts.
"We fund all our projects from our own pockets. That's why we haven't registered our organisation ... but now we have realised that as we are in this process [of raising funds for Zuma] we should register the organisation so that it is transparent," he said.
Nkandla ad hoc committee chairman, the ANC's Cedric Frolick, said although they had disregarded Mchunu's letter - as their mandate was to deal with the four reports - he had to circulate it to MPs as it had been addressed to them.
- TimesLive
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