Zuma, the survivor, comes out with minor scratches
AS DAMNING as the Public Protector’s investigation into the renovations of the private residence of President Jacob Zuma is of every player that had a role, the man at the centre of it emerges relatively unscathed.
While the report makes decisive findings on how at every single point, every government department and (almost) every official involved, from the Department of Public Works to the minister of police, bungled their part of the process, Zuma’s integrity and ethical failure are questioned only moderately.
If a party failed to do that, says University of Cape Town law professor Richard Calland, “voters would do it themselves, by punishing the party at the polls”.
But this is not the type of country we are living in. That is why the narrow view, likely to be the one the ruling party will take, is important when assessing the real-life scale of Nkandla ’s political implications.
The DA has called for Zuma’s impeachment on the grounds of the report, which in its own paradigm of liberal democracy, is the inevitable and necessary thing to do. But for the ANC, which sees its leaders as accountable first to its branches and then to the wider public, to fire a president on the grounds of benefits – which he is not found to have requested himself – is an unthinkable proposition.
Instead, it will have to take the pain at the polls. How bad it will be is anyone’s guess. “The masses” are often not bothered about the public accountability issues that the chattering classes froth on about, but Nkandla is different for the very personal and shocking way in which one man has benefited.
But while Zuma does not receive the same drubbing from the Public Protect as other state officials and even cabinet members, some findings are rather unsavoury.
No proof is provided that he colluded with Minenhle Makhanya, his private architect who, due to public works “maladministration”, later became the de facto manager of the project. But the possibility is strongly hinted at.
Makhanya was brought on board because, the argument went, he was already doing work for Zuma at Nkandla.
It is common cause, Madonsela says, that Makhanya “served as the go-between between government officials and the president, leaving it to him to discuss designs with and explain the president’s preferences”. Makhanya, she finds, frequently was asked by officials to design something “more economic and would come back with something more expensive or even luxurious”.
In all of this, Zuma never asked questions about the scale and affordability of the project, never applied his mind to a range of questions and, insofar as he failed to “protect state resources”, he is found to have committed an ethical failure.
That it is only unearned benefits and a lack of attention to detail for which, at the end of it all, Zuma must stand to account, is testimony to his political wiliness. It has enabled him to survive one scandal after another.
Carol Paton is writer at large for Business Day