DA got it wrong, says Zuma

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has argued in papers filed in the Constitutional Court that the DA and EFF misunderstood Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s directive that he repay a reasonable amount of the money spent on his Nkandla home.

Zuma suggested that the DA and the EFF might have erred by not launching a legal challenge directly to Police Minister Nathi Nhleko’s report that relieved him of any obligation to refund the state.

“Rather than launching a review, the DA, like the EFF in their application, contend that the exercise the PP (public protector) directed excluded any consideration of whether the specific items were security related.

“This is a fundamental misinterpretation on a plain reading of the PP report.

“The report did not say, and could not mean, that security considerations did not play any role in the provision of the specific items. Nor did it say, and nor could it mean, that I must unquestioningly, as an individual, pay for the specific items.”

The DA has made the point repeatedly that Madonsela did not in her report instruct Zuma to decide whether to repay any money but to work out, with the help of the police minister and National Treasury, how much he should refund.

But the president argued that he deliberately removed himself from any decisionmaking role in the process.

“It would hardly be appropriate for me to do such calculations on my own, given that I would then (correctly) have been accused of being ‘judge and jury in my own cause’.”

He therefore assigned this task to Nhleko, who found that all features added to his rural home served a security purpose.

The Constitutional Court is set to hear the applications in early February. – ANA