Jacob Zuma pays a mere R800 per month for the lease on his 8.9 hectare Nkandla compound, according to a City Press report. This is the land on which the controversial R206-million upgrade to Zuma's private home is taking place.
The newspaper reported on Sunday that, according to documentation it obtained, Zuma's lease is for 40 years with the option to renew. Adjacent to Zuma's estate is a 6.6 hectare area, leased by the public works department, for R1 300 per month.
The newspaper also revealed a "scramble" to secure the leases, resulting in a fast-tracking of that process.
It was previously reported that an investigation by the public works department into the financing of the Nkandla upgrades would be kept a "secret". This was because the report would be referred to Parliament's standing committee on intelligence, ostensibly for "security reasons". That committee's work is not open to the public.
Meanwhile, the M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism, amaBhungane, is taking Thulas Nxesi, the minister of public works, to court in an attempt to gain access to the full details of Nkandla's funding. This is after the department ignored an attempt to obtain the documentation via the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
The Mail & Guardian previously revealed how Zuma himself was aware of the scale of the upgrades at Nkandla. Leaked documents showed that Zuma was kept abreast of the upgrades in "exhaustive detail" as early as November 2010.
This week, Deputy Public Works Minister Jeremy Cronin told Talk Radio 702 he was anxious for an explanation on the "clearly outrageous" cost of the R206-million upgrade to Zuma's private home in Nkandla.
"It's clearly outrageous, it's clearly hard to justify."
Cronin was responding to concerns raised by Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko that Cronin's senior, Nxesi, classified a report on how the money was spent by sending it to Parliament's joint standing committee on intelligence. The committee meets behind closed doors and its members are sworn to secrecy.
Public protector Thuli Madonsela has conducted a probe into the upgrade. There is currently speculation on whether or not she will publicly release a report into the matter.
Last year, City Press reported that Zuma would pay only 5% of the bill for the upgrade, or around R10-million.
The president's private home will reportedly feature underground bunkers, a clinic, a fire station, special quarters for police, and a helipad. – Additional reporting by Sapa
Jazzie you ask who’s paying . . . you the Taxpayers are paying.
ReplyDeleteOne don’t need a degree in Maths to see how the populous and special mention has to be made of the White populous, has been taxed and charged to death by the ruling ANC.
Friends of ours has a butchery in KwaZulu Natal and she wrote and complained that chickens [a reasonably cheap meat] is to be price increased by 50% by order of the state.
And I’m sure that’s not the only increase on the horizon.
How do the poor survive and this idiot you have for a president spends 100’s of millions on a save home for him and his concubines.
It’s time for house cleaning and I don’t mean sweep the dirt under the carpet – I mean get rid of the dirt take your country back, while there’s still something to safe.
Also don’t overlook the money mongering jewish hand behind the communist ANC they’re just as great a thread to South Africa as they are to the rest of the Worlds White Nations.
Keep up the good work – tell it as it is and not as the powers to be wants it to be.