Zuma’s free swimming pool
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA— It’s official: a swimming pool is essential to home security.
You can thank South Africa’s large-living president, Jacob Zuma, for that excuse. It’s one of the creative explanations for upgrades to Zuma’s private rural residence, which cost South African taxpayer more than $20 million.
The country’s police minister Nkosinathi Nhleko recently released his investigation into state spending on the president’s retreat in Nkandla, his home village in Kwa-Zulu-Natal.
A previous report found that Zuma had benefited unduly and should repay a portion of the expenses. The police minister’s report justified the state-funded upgrades, which included a swimming pool, chicken run and cattle corral, as necessary for security reasons.
The swimming pool at Zuma’s house has long been explained away as a “fire pool,” meaning, it will be used as a water source should one of the thatched roof buildings in the compound catch fire.
But this report, unlike the others, rather bizarrely included video demonstrations filmed at the president’s home, screened at a media briefing in Cape Town that was also broadcast live on national television.
Journalists could be heard laughing as the “fire pool” demonstration video began, accompanied by the sombre strains of “O Sole Mio.” The video went on to show water being pumped from what is clearly a swimming pool, through a hose pipe, offering viewers an up-close look at Zuma’s Nkandla homestead.
The police minister soberly declared that a swimming pool is the most important security feature at Nkandla, a line repeated by the official government Twitter account.
Another video attempted to show, with the help of Wikipedia, how an amphitheatre was actually a retaining wall to protect a security road from soil erosion.
The video about the cattle corral featured a fedora-wearing cultural expert who explained the significance of cattle in Zulu culture. The chicken run is necessary, it seems, to stop “free-running chickens” from triggering sensitive security alarms.
The bottom line: Zuma will not have to repay any of the money spent on his Nkandla residence, because all home improvements were found necessary for security reasons. Especially the fire pool.