Don’t compare us with Zuma, says Mandla
MVEZO chief Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, has said it is laughable that government spending on the Mvezo Great Place in the Eastern Cape is being compared to the government’s irregular spending on President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead.
“It is not money misspent. It is spent on a community,” he said.
The Dispatch newspaper reported that many national government departments have for almost a decade pumped more than R200-million into the Great Place with the idea of turning it into a tourist attraction, yet not a single booking has been made and the project remains unfinished.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Mandela said it was concerning that services to a rural community were being questioned but investment in urban areas was lauded.
The director-general of tourism, Victor Tharage, said the department did not misspend money on the Mvezo Great Place Project.
“That project was a communitybased project and was not meant to be a mass-based tourism project.”
Tharage said there was nothing untoward about the government’s development of the Mvezo Great Place and had myriad objectives including educational tourism. The project had potential and was not meant to enrich any individual.
The DA’s Phumzile van Damme said they would pose questions to find out why taxpayers’ money had been spent on the Great Place in Mvezo, particularly by the Department of Tourism.
According to the report, of the R200-million spent on the project so far, R127-million was used to pave a road from the N2 to the Mvezo Great Place gate and R48-million was used to build 50-plus modern rondavels.
Mandela said the money spent was part of a larger project by the Department of Rural Development, which had invited other government departments to develop the rural area. “The access road being done is for the accessibility of the community. It is to restore the dignity of women who had to strip naked to be pushed through a river by men,” he said.
Mandela said a proper visit to the Great Place would show that everything built was used for the upliftment of the community.
Mandela said money from the lottery had been used to build a museum but the content had not yet been finalised.