Nkandla case to go ahead: DA
The Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday it would pursue its Constitutional Court case against President Jacob Zuma.
This despite President Zuma's offer to reimburse the state for some of the improvements added to his Nkandla home in a controversy that has haunted his presidency.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane said Zuma’s offer, made in the unconventional manner of a letter to the registrar of the court, was yet another attempt to subvert the process ordered by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela in her 2014 report on the project that began as a security upgrade but eventually cost more than R200 million and included a swimming pool and cattle kraal.
Zuma is proposing to pay a sum to be determined by the Auditor-General and the minister of finance. In a statement issued late on Tuesday, his office described this as “a simple course to implement what the Public Protector recommended as remedial action contained in the report”.
But after the DA leadership met with lawyers early on Wednesday, Maimane begged to differ, telling a media briefing at Parliament that it was Zuma’s fifth attempt to deviate from Madonsela’s directives.
“In fact, we contend that the president designating the Auditor-General to come to a determination as to how much he is liable is the latest attempt to establish a parallel process, for a fifth time.”
Maimane said he believed that Zuma made the settlement offer in part to spare him the political embarrassment of having his state of the nation address disrupted the second year in a row by calls to refund the taxpayer for Nkandla, in part because he realised he would lose the court battle.
This, the DA believes, was because of the legal precedent set by the Supreme Court of Appeal last year when it ruled in the Hlaudi Motsoeneng matter and said the findings of the Public Protector were binding on the State.
“We built the case against Motsoeneng knowing that if you build case law you can go with that to the Constitutional Court,” he said, adding that the legal battle against the SABC chief operating officer was always waged with an eye to the implications for the Zuma matter. - ANA
(File photo: Gallo Images)