Whitewash SIU report proves need for Nkandla ad hoc committee
29 May 2014
What appears to be provisional Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report emanating from an investigation into the R246 million expenditure on President Jacob Zuma's private home in Nkandla has been leaked to the public (see Times report).
If what is being reported in the media this morning is in fact true, then it would appear that this report is nothing more than a complete whitewash. It does not ask pertinent questions around this abuse of public funds in an attempt to shield President Zuma from accountability.
It has become explicitly clear that if we are to get to the bottom of the Nkandla scandal we need to re-establish the Nkandla ad hoc committee which started its work during the fourth Parliament.
The work of this committee was untimely terminated due to the ANC's obvious filibustering tactics.
It became clear quite early on that the members of the ANC is the committee were following orders hailing directly from Luthuli House to delay and undermine the work of the committee that was established by the former Speaker of the National Assembly, Max Sisulu.
The DA has since written to the newly appointed Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, to request that she urgently re-establish the Nkandla ad hoc committee so that elected members of Parliament can begin their constitutionally mandated duty of oversight and holding the Executive to account.
I will also be writing to President Zuma to request that he urgently provides a detailed response to the Public Protector's report into this matter to Parliament.
His letter to the Speaker last term argued that his less than adequate response to the Nkandla report was due to the fact that he was waiting for the SIU investigation to completed. Now that this report is nearing completion, he must account to Parliament without any further delay about this multi-million rand scandal.
The DA will not rest until all those who have acted unlawfully, including President Zuma, are held to account for this gross abuse of public money. No amount of engineered reports that unfairly scapegoat government officials will distract us from this mission. Both the SIU and Public Works Task Team reports have been a colossal waste of time and money because they have been authored for the sole purpose of covering up one of the biggest scandals in democratic South Africa.
The Public Protector, Adv Thuli Madonsela, made a number of disappointing but hardly unexpected findings about the role President Zuma played in the spending of millions upon millions of public funds on his personal home. She found that:
President Zuma tacitly accepted the implementation of all measures at his residence and has unduly benefited from the enormous capital investment from the non-security installations at his private residence.
The President failed to apply his mind to the contents of the Declaration of his private residence as a National Key Point and specifically failed to implement security measures at own cost as directed by it or to approach the Minister of Police for a variation of the Declaration.
His failure to act in protection of state resources constituted a violation of paragraph 2 of the Executive Ethics Code, and accordingly, amounts to conduct that is inconsistent with his office as a member of Cabinet, as contemplated by Section 96 of the Constitution.
As the ultimate upholder of the values of the Constitution and custodian of public funds, it was in the Public Protector's opinion that he ought to have interrogated the need for measures that were clearly non-security.
President Zuma failed to answer 18 key questions put to him by the Public Protector, which were essential to determining his part played in the scandal. This included refusing to hand over a copy of his bond.
In doing so, together with delays on the part of the state, the report was delayed by more than a year.
It light of these damning findings and binding recommendations that she has made, the DA will march into that committee with renewed vigour to ensure that a President who prioritises self-enrichment at the expense of the tax payer is brought to book and removed from office by the very institution that has the power to hire and fire him.
Statement issued by James Selfe MP, Chairperson of the DA's Federal Executive, May 29 2014
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