ANC MPS GO FURTHER THAN MADONSELA TO HIGHLIGHT SCANDAL AT NKANDLA

24 July 2015

The bashing of the Public Protector by the ruling party continues unabated. This time it is the turn of Thandi Mahambehlala to damn Madonsela for supposedly tarnishing the government’s credibility. She said that Madonsela’s report traumatised her because it had misled South Africans and called the President names without any basis.

Ironically, the ad hoc committee has done a great deal more than Madonsela to shame the government thoroughly. Madonsela only scratched the surface. ANC MPs showed how massive the waste of resources really was.

Frolick was very candid. The handling of the Nkandla prestige project was an object lesson of everything that was wrong. Not a single member of the ruling party can offer a credible explanation why the government spent six million rand on each of the 21 houses for the police. One can acquire a mansion for six million rand.

Also, what explanation can Thandi Mahambehlala offer for the tiled floor and the shower in the cattle kraal that we are now learning about? Since when do cattle walk on a tiled floor and how on earth does this constitute a security upgrade?

This government mindlessly and lamentably squandered R246 million on shoddy and unnecessary construction which had little to do with security upgrades. Consensus prevailed on this. If all the members of the committee could see this, why didn’t the president himself detect such shoddiness? Furthermore, why did he permit security monitors to lie unmounted? Worse still, why did he allow massive expenditure on the underground bunker? Would President Nelson Mandela have stood back and allowed such nonsensical expenditure in the name of security upgrades?

The scandal has become bigger than ever. The profligacy of the Zuma administration is there for the whole world to see. Ruling party MPs have borne testimony to this.

The ruling party should apologise to the Public Protector. Her efforts only started the ball rolling. That report led to MPs discovering the true extent of the horror story for themselves.

The ruling party should express its gratitude to her for the initial exposure of the rot at Nkandla. It is the ruling party MPsm however, who have laid bare the depth and extent of the rot. Not one of them can find R246 million rand worth of improvements and what a huge revelation that is.

Henceforth we should forget about the Public Protector’s findings and recommendations. Let us now focus sharply on the findings of the ruling party MPs. They have brought more dirt to the surface than the Public Protector could ever have done. What they discovered is a national disgrace. Now there is consensus that almost everything at Nkandla was wrong and hardly anything was right. Instead of paying a reasonable portion that the Public Protector gently suggested we should substantially scale up the quantum and hold those in government fully accountable.

Thanks to the ruling party MPs we can now lambast the government for its profligacy, its abuse of taxpayers money’, its incompetence and its inability to manage any project. They have shown South Africa and the world how bad they are at governing.

For those who worked on the project it was lotto time to walk away with millions in their back pocket. The ANC has let the people down and it is Thandi Mahambehlala and her colleagues who opened our eyes to the real horror at Nkandla.

Statement issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE spokesperson, July 24 2015