New Age2.png Nkandla has neither security nor comfort Public protector Thuli Madonsela has presented the public with a shoddy report Yonela Diko, The New Age, Johannesburg, 29 July 2015 It is now clear to all South Africans that President Jacob Zuma is neither secured nor comfortable in his private home at Nkandla as alleged by public protector Thuli Madonsela. In her report Madonsela boldly declared that the president was "secure in comfort" in his private residence, which it has now emerged was an absolute lie. This has been clearly rubbished by facts found during a site visit to the President's Nkandla homestead. It is absolutely shocking how Madonsela could have missed such blatant and obvious incongruence between money spent and the actual value of that money on the ground. However, this does not help in disproving her detractors who have always seen her as one with a private and prejudicial interest on all things Zuma and ANC related. She spoke of a cattle kraal she had not seen, an amphitheatre she knew nothing about and a swimming pool that was only real in its magnitude in her own head and to ask in the main, that the President must pay for these shady things. She should have instead asked where the money was that was arguably spent on these structures (as anyone who had taken time to visit the home would have seen that there is absolutely no value for the said money spent) is not only gross incompetence but a targeted behaviour that seeks to charge the President for sins, real or imagined, as long as he is charged. Her inability not to appreciate the weight of importance in her task and the consequences of decisions that flow from her findings, to not have spent time in Nkandla and see the actual state of this opulence she was fact finding on, can only mean that Thuli Madonsela takes her decisions not in line with fact (she clearly is not interested in those), but in line with public perception and she has proven to derive great vanity from media approval (masquerading as public approval). First of all, any public protector who was actually interested in serving the interest of the public would know that if you want to err on a presidential protection, you want to err on over securing rather than on under securing the President. Madonsela created an impression that she understood this and left us thinking the President is not only secured but he is opulently secured and extremely comfortable, which as one might argue, would have been a stretch on the good intentions of protecting heads of state wherever they may be. It is now clear why the price-tag of Nkandla kept growing and growing. The builders were not meeting the bare minimum standards of protecting a head of state and they most probably kept blaming it on limited budget and the state kept raising the money in order not to compromise security of a president because of money. But the builders have erred on the under security as is clear in Nkandla. Madonsela chooses to bypass this fact as it would not serve her predetermined position and chooses to investigate Nkandla as if she is investigating from those mock up brochures that show the house as it will be when finished, instead of investigating the actual physical existing structure. To her the President had spent R246m on his home and was therefore "secure in comfort", Thuli has messed up and should be accountable for having misled the public. The Special Investigations Unit went straight for the obvious kill. The contractors have failed to produce a R246m home and they need to tell us where the rest of the money is. The opposition is urging for the implementation of the SIU report, which they had earlier rejected because they heavily relied on Madonsela's report. Thuli took the country for a ride. Zuma cannot possible be asked to pay for something that is not there. What Madonsela should have suggested, is first an assessment of the true value of Nkandla as it stands with its shoddy workmanship and then out of that, determine whether Zuma was overly secured in comfort, and then ask where the rest of the money was. Madonsela's report on Nkandla is as shoddy as the workmanship at the homestead and it would be foolhardy for her to expect us to reject the builder's poor workmanship but to accept the poor work of an investigator who was supposed to tell us about the very poor work and its costs. The critical question is "who is this public that went to her to lodge a complaint about Nkandla?" We cannot have a public protector being used by those who have lost the battle to represent the interest of the public at the ballot box. Madonsela has to wait for the public to approach her. Even more importantly, she has to watch carefully that she is not being used for political gamesmanship. . Yonela Diko is a writer and commentator. From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/29072015/epaperpdf/20.pdf -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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