Nkandla - The End of Democracy in South Africa?

The Nkandla story has had thinking South Africans inflamed for many months, but never more so than during the debate in Parliament on the report of the committee investigating whether President Zuma should be held responsible for the cost of the upgrades to his private home, a bill that exceeds R246 000 000.  Predictably, the ANC Committee found that Zuma could not be held responsible.  Amidst all the rhetoric, several facts stand out clearly:

1.    In accordance with a Cabinet memorandum, itself a questionable method of controlling the excesses of Ministers and the President, Zuma was entitled to State funding for improvements to the security arrangements at his home.  Most of the expenditure did not relate to such security matters.

2.    Zuma appointed architect Minenhle Makhanya as his agent to oversee the construction.  Makhanya instructed that the upgrades were implemented.  In addition to this role being illegal in the process of expending public funds, an interesting point arises.  In South African law, an agent is a person appointed by the principal to act in his stead, and his actions are imputed to the principal as though the principal himself had so acted.  Zuma has claimed that he did not know what was happening at Nkandla.  Two conclusions may be drawn from this statement.  Either Zuma is clearly lying about his state of knowledge, because he was personally present on site on at least several occasions, and so could not have known at least the approximate extent of the expenditure, or he has acted in a way that is so negligent as to defy belief, a conclusion that is probably as damaging to him in his role as the Chief Executive of South Africa Inc. as the conclusion that he is a simple, and simple-minded, liar.  Or, probably, both.  However that is viewed, the simple fact is that the agent acted on behalf of Zuma, and Zuma must bear the consequences for those actions.

3.    Zuma has stated in Parliament that the total cost of the home was paid by the family from a mortgage loan, but he has consistently failed to provide any evidence of this.  Either he is lying about the mortgage loan, or the family has managed to scrape together R246 000 000 during his career as a politician.  Zuma is known to have had limited financial skills, so he must be a brilliant investor, or, more likely, the numerous allegations of his involvement in corruption are correct.  An investigation into his tax returns is likely to yield fascinating results, both in terms of how he earned the money, and whether he has paid the taxes on those earnings that he is so loudly demanding at the G20 should be paid by productive corporations.

4.    The funds that were used to pay for the upgrades were diverted from community projects, projects that were funded by vote of Parliament to uplift the ‘poorest of the poor’.  This diversion was handled in an underhanded way, which is, to say the least, illegal.  Zuma would have us believe that he had no knowledge of the source of such funding.  This alone is sufficient to demand his removal from office.

5.    Zuma has consistently refused to answer the questions of the Public Protector, an office established under the Constitution for the explicit purpose of protecting the public from the sort of excess and illegality represented by the actions of Zuma in this matter.  His refusal to answer questions, his lengthy delays in responding to the Public Protector, and his ignoring of the findings of the Public Protector are all in flagrant contempt of the Constitution, and are certainly grounds for his impeachment.

6.    Zuma has been protected by the ANC from having to appear to answer questions in Parliament about this matter.  His role as President does not put him above Parliament or the law, but enhances the need for him to provide the fullest information to the Representatives of the People.  His failure to fulfill that obligation shows the contempt in which he holds the Constitution and the organs that uphold it.

7.    The ANC is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to shield this man from his legal and moral obligations, and so must be construed to be complicit in his breaches of those obligations.

What should be concluded from this event?  Certain conclusions are inescapable.

1.    President Zuma will go down in history as the worst President ever to lead South Africa, Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd included.  He has brought the country to a new low of honesty, integrity and competence.

 

2.    The ANC has proven that even an advanced nation such as South Africa has the capability to become an African banana republic.  There is an increasing belief in South Africa, even amongst the Black population, that ‘things were better under Apartheid’!

3.    The outrage felt by the public, particularly the tax-paying public, in South Africa is such that the country has edged significantly closer to an outright revolution.  It is fair to say that the economic stability of the nation will be severely impacted by the fallout of the Nkandla Scandal, coming on top of the Arms Deal Cover-up and the Marikana affair.

4.    Thinking and moral investors will cross South Africa off the list of possible investment destinations, to the extent that that has not already been done.  They will see that it is a country in which no organ of State feels itself obliged to comply with the terms or the spirit of the Constitution, and therefore a place where the laws of the land no longer have any meaning other than what the ruling Party decides they have.  This has been a long time coming, twenty years in fact, but it has now reached the status of a new Apartheid, ignorance of property rights, extreme corruption, in which a loss to corruption of R30 billion is considered to be an improvement and a situation of more than two-thirds of municipalities fail to obtain a clean audit, a country in which the education system, if it can be said to exist at all, is ‘improved’ by adjustment of the pass mark to 30%.

5.    All of those South Africans who wish to live honest and productive lives will be looking for places to which they can emigrate.  It has been a disturbing trend in South Africa that people believe that the only way to succeed is to join the corrupt system, and feed off the incompetence that has been fostered by Zuma and his cronies.

6. The ANC has proven that democracy as a concept has no meaning in South Africa.  The Party is prepared to ignore all the safeguards that the Constitution has put in place to protect the people against the excesses of the political leaders and the dishonesty of the cadres they have appointed in positions of power.

If there is to be any hope for South Africa, President Zuma and his Cabinet, together with his Party, must be removed from office soon.  A five year wait until the next election is too long for the country to survive as a democracy.  In the meanwhile citizens should be alert to moves being made by the ANC to bring the military into the fold.  Remember, when the citizens revolt in Africa, the first step of the sitting dictator is to impose military rule. 

Certainly, that is unconstitutional, but who in the present Government has shown any regard for the Constitution?