IF THE red lights are not flashing over Parliament’s special report on the R246m spending at President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home, they should be.
The report of the National Assembly’s ad hoc committee on the Nkandla upgrades released this week asks citizens to believe some astonishing things — not the least being that Mr Zuma neither knew of the upgrades nor had approved them.
Over the years there have been many helicopter flights between King Shaka International Airport and Nkandla, at a cost of millions of rand, to ferry Mr Zuma to his rural home at weekends.
The amount spent on the flights indicates that Mr Zuma visited regularly. So for a good couple of months there would have been construction happening in front of his nose at his home. But the committee is asking us to believe that he did not ask anybody what was going on at his home.
We are also being asked to believe that the head of state was not asked if he approved of the design of the so-called security upgrades being constructed at his private home.
Keeping in mind that he and his family would have to live with the upgrades for a long time after the end of his term of office, does it not make sense that the changes to his home would have to have been to his liking? Even if they were only security measures?
The opposition’s alternative report comes to the conclusion that Mr Zuma both knew and approved of the construction at Nkandla and recommends that he be removed from office for undermining the public protector and misleading Parliament about having a bond on the Nkandla property.
Another deeply problematic recommendation from the ad hoc committee is that security experts from the State Security Agency and the South African Police Service return to Nkandla to determine whether the security upgrades are adequate and report their findings to Parliament.
Because this report will deal with the president’s security, the findings will be reported to Parliament’s joint standing committee on intelligence. This committee meets in secret and its members take an oath of confidentiality, meaning any further irregular spending at Nkandla could be hidden from public scrutiny.
Given the way in which the African National Congress members of the ad hoc committee have rallied to protect Mr Zuma, it is not difficult to believe that those serving on the intelligence committee would do the same.
It has become clear that former public works minister Geoff Doidge, his then deputy Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu and public works officials on the team at Nkandla are going to carry the can for the outrageous spending.
The ad hoc committee recommends that "the president should note the instances where the executive authorities — ie the former minister and deputy minister of public works — did not act according to the prescripts of the Public Finance Management Act that sets out precise divisions of responsibility between the executive authority and the administration, and if necessary, take appropriate action.
"The president should consider whether any member(s) of the executive authority failed to implement the provisions of the Cabinet memorandum of 2003, either through complacency or negligence in the execution of their duties, and, if necessary, take appropriate action."
This is hugely problematic as an interministerial probe had not even interviewed Mr Doidge or Ms Bogopane-Zulu. The ad hoc committee is also giving the power to resolve the Nkandla matter to the very person who should be answering questions about the spending — Mr Zuma himself.
The damage being done to Parliament through this abrogation of its constitutional duty to hold the executive to account is deeply alarming.
- BDLive
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