Palesa Morudu asks why a president whose term of office ends officially in less than 18 months would need an elaborate system of bunkers at his private residence
OUR constitution guarantees the right to cultural diversity. So President Jacob Zuma’s rural home cannot be judged through standards of an urban white home.” So said Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi at a media briefing on Friday. Presumably his crude race-baiting aimed to shut up people who are asking too many questions.
And so it was that, on the advice of the distinguished minister of the super-clean Department of Public Works and other presidential apologists, I decided to put aside my “urban bias” to fully understand the meaning of Nkandla.
This clearing of misperceptions has been a revelation and I am pleased to report that the logic is unassailable. We should simply declare Zuma president for life. (I also made a mental note to reread Govan Mbeki’s The Peasants’ Revolt so that I am not caught off guard when the rural masses finally rise up against the profligacy and vanity of the Leader.)
Zuma is clearly not a “less is more” man. He is the Big Man. He likes big things such as a helipad, a fully equipped trauma clinic, a fire department, a visitor centre, playgrounds, underground living quarters, underground parking and several houses for security personnel. Nearly all of the top-secret price tag for the presidential aggrandisement, which reportedly runs to well more than R200m, is funded by the public.
Leave aside the fact that Zuma has access to three official residences in Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban. This is clearly not enough. We now have a sprawling rural homestead that is not only an ostentatious eyesore amid the surrounding poverty in Nkandla but a reminder of what happens to a country when thieving becomes policy.
I’m pretty sure I heard Nxesi utter the inevitable “international best practice”, a phrase no South African politician can afford to do without in a tight spot. Happily, there is substantial precedent in the president for life field — Papa Doc Duvalier, Mobutu SeseSeko and Idi Amin, to name a few.
Zuma’s spokesman Mac Maharaj told the UK’s Daily Telegraph that Zuma needs this elaborate rural sprawl so he is able to host leaders such as US President Barack Obama when they visit SA.
And why not? We can see the need for many world leaders to consult Zuma and obtain his wise counsel, whether he is president or not, at his personal mansion. They could seek his advice on matters ranging from fiscal probity to prosecutorial avoidance, plus think of the boost to rural tourism.
The underground bunkers are perhaps the most intriguing thing. Why would a president whose term of office ends officially in less than 18 months need an elaborate system of bunkers at his private residence? Either someone is coining it on the presidential vanity or there are plans for Zuma to host Cabinet meetings at the “homestead” for many years to come.
Or perhaps the bunkers will provide militarily secure retirement facilities for officials who have performed necessary but constitutionally dubious services for Zuma.
Nxesi and his pliant acting director-general should understand that Friday’s media briefing will forever define them in the national memory. We trust that the craven bootlicking was worth it. In the service of the president, the two threw a veil of secrecy over this scandalous splurge. They relied on the Defence Act and the National Key Points Act, the latter being a relic of apartheid. Nxesi said disclosing the amounts being spent on this project would “endanger the president”. (Politically, he is probably right.) No one asked Nxesi to provide security details of the compound, just the amounts spent.
We all know that many former liberation movements have presided over periods of precipitous decline. Lying party hacks mumble about defending the revolution as the looting spreads. Security paranoia mushrooms, as do police brutality, calls to have laws to protect the “dignity” of the ruler, deployment of the army in the streets, the banning of demonstrations and political assassinations.
And pretty soon you start to hear calls for a leader to stay in office to ensure “unity” and defend the “revolution”. We still have the power to stop it. - • Morudu writes from Cape Town.