DEPUTY President Kgalema Motlanthe has challenged his boss, President Jacob Zuma, to make the Nkandla report public.
DEPUTY President Kgalema Motlanthe has challenged his boss, President Jacob Zuma, to make the Nkandla report public.
Motlanthe was speaking to Tim Modise on new talk radio station Power FM on Thursday night.
When Motlanthe was asked about the government's classification of the Nkandla report as secret, he was unambiguous, albeit in his softly guarded way.
"Of course, you cannot divulge information that would make the occupants of that residence vulnerable, but I would have thought that the scope of the project would be made public.
"Accountability and transparency are sides of the same coin. It is important to be accountable in the public space. Once there's a shroud of secrecy, it gives rise to speculation, suspicion, mistrust.
"Once you have those three elements together you can't lead effectively - every word you utter, there are 101 questions and there are doubts because nobody believes [you].
"To be able to lead effectively there shouldn't be doubt; leadership goes side by side with prestige," he said.
Modise probed further: "So, if it were up to you, you wouldn't classify that?"
"There's no need," he answered. "Once there was clamour and an outcry about it, there was no need to shroud it in secrecy.
"There's nothing wrong with giving information on the scope of the project."
The Nkandla report by the Department of Public Works regarding the R203m spent on Zuma's private residence in rural Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal, has been classified top secret.
Zuma has ferociously defended himself against the uproar over Nkandla. He told parliament that he and his family paid for the home and that the government had added security features in accordance with his own needs analysis.
Zuma spokesman Mac Maharaj said he had not heard the Power FM interview and could not comment because the Nkandla matter was the subject of an investigation.
Political analyst Somadoda Fikeni said he read into Motlanthe's remarks a cautious, suppressed frustration.
"Motlanthe has always advocated a different approach," Fikeni said. "He even campaigned on it - that things can be handled differently. He has expressed this from time to time."
Asked if he thought that Motlanthe's frustration was so strong that he would walk away from the ANC at the end of the current administration, Fikeni said: "I don't see the deputy president disappearing into the sunset like former president Thabo Mbeki.
"He is a cautious politician. I think that he will feel that he will make more of an impression by going to the political school of the ANC and raising issues and teaching future leaders of the ANC about the things that have caused his frustration."
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