Zuma agrees to repay state money spent on his home
JOHANNESBURG: A day after South Africa’s highest court ruled that he had violated the constitution in a long-running scandal involving government money spent on upgrades to his homestead, President Jacob Zuma said he would pay back part of it in accordance with the ruling, but that he had never meant to undermine the constitution.
In a televised address on Friday evening, Mr Zuma offered the nation an apology but stopped short of taking responsibility for his actions and blamed advisers for his legal problems.
The violation of the constitution, he said, “happened because of a different approach and different legal advice”.
“It all happened in good faith, and there was no deliberate effort or intention to subvert the constitution on my part,” Mr Zuma said.
Still, he said, “the matter has caused a lot of frustration and confusion, for which I apologise on my behalf and on behalf of government”.
Mr Zuma spoke after meeting with top officials of his party, the African National Congress, which rallied around him Friday. Opposition lawmakers repeated their calls for his resignation.
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court said Mr Zuma had “failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution” by ignoring a directive from the nation’s public protector to repay the state for some upgrades to his home in Nkandla.
In 2014, the public protector’s office — established by the post-apartheid constitution to safeguard South Africa’s young democracy by investigating official corruption and misconduct — concluded that the president had misused public funds on non-security upgrades to his home. Mr Zuma was directed to repay a portion of the upgrades, which totaled more than US$16 million at current exchange rates.
As Mr Zuma ignored the directive, his party relentlessly assailed the public protector, Thulisile Madonsela, with one deputy minister calling her a spy for the CIA. The National Assembly, controlled by Mr Zuma’s party, issued a report exonerating him.
The Constitutional Court ruled that if Mr Zuma disagreed with the public protector’s directive, the constitution required him to challenge it in the courts — and not in the National Assembly. But the court stopped short of saying that Mr Zuma had deliberately or willfully violated the constitution.
“He might have been following wrong legal advice and therefore acting in good faith,” the court said. In February, as legal experts predicted the Constitutional Court would rule against Mr Zuma, he surprised many by offering to reimburse some of the costs — reversing his position of many years.