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Tafelberg
Short
Nkandla – The end of Zuma?
CITY PRESS
Tafelberg
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Foreword
There are words that become shorthand and morph into the popular culture, their understanding much deeper and more layered than the length of them. So, “arms deal” is one. The two words are used to deliver an entire set of meanings. This can include the factual: the arms deal was the refitting of the navy, air and defence forces for deeper roles in the world and across the continent after 1994. But the more common meaning describes the corruption that accompanied the deal where arms merchants inducted the new democrats into the ways of patronage and corruption. We bought the wrong armaments at hugely inflated prices as bag-men for politicians walked away with millions.
We are no closer to its truth than we were 10 years ago. And this is, it seems to me, where we will sit in 10 years time when we excavate the path of another word that has come to mean many things. Nkandla.
Factually, the village of Nkandla holds President Jacob Zuma’s private homestead, his umuzi. It is his family home and hearth, where the Zuma clan hails from. But, as I write, Nkandla has come to mean much more. It is shorthand for grand corruption.
President Zuma and his bag-man, Schabir Shaik, are said to have requested a fee of half a million rand a year from arms merchants in the course of the deal. Nkandla is much grander: it has cost the public purse R246-million (and rising), according to the nation’s makhadzi, our matriarch and public protector, Thuli Madonsela. Nkandla yields so many issues for democrats to ponder upon.
The one that occupies my mind most is where we stand now on the role of law in society. If the public protector’s reports are now serially filibustered through the courts by those whom she finds fall short on the standard of public service, it can make a nonsense of the institution. And if the laws that govern the president – I’m thinking here of administrative justice, executive ethics, the various Cabinet standards – are ignored with such insouciance, surely it says we are downgrading the rule of law and its role in society?
Nkandla has also come to symbolise a cross-roads. It is the time we decide whether we want leaders who are circumscribed by law and ultimately by constitutional sovereignty or whether we want leaders who are like kings or chiefs – the sovereign themselves who are largely untouchable.
Ferial Haffajee
The Nkandla region
Nkandla, in the uThungulu district of KwaZulu-Natal, encompasses nearly 115,000 inhabitants, spread relatively sparsely over a large area. The majority of the population are Zulu. The district is well known for several reasons: it is the home of popular maskandi music and the evergreen Ekhombe forest that houses unique species and promotes eco-tourism.
It is also the birthplace of South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma.
Born in Nkandla on April 12 1942, as a young man Zuma herded cattle and did not get an opportunity to gain a formal education. When his policeman father died at the end of World War 2, Zuma’s mother took up employment as a domestic worker in Durban. Zuma spent his childhood moving between Durban and Nkandla. Owing to his deprived childhood, he never had formal schooling except a year or two at eMathungela.
He joined the ANC in 1959, orchestrated an anti-pass campaign in Nkandla in the 1950s and became active in Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1962 after the banning of the ANC. While on his way out of South Africa, he was arrested outside Zeerust with 45 other recruits. He spent 10 years in Robben Island. On his release, Zuma spent a short time at home in Nkandla.
After going into exile in 1975 he rose in the ANC to head its intelligence department in 1980 while in Lusaka, Zambia. Later he headed the ANC’s underground structures. After surviving a rape trial and corruption allegations he defeated Thabo Mbeki in 2007 to become party president and, in 2009, was inaugurated as State President of South Africa.
Until it became famous as the hometown of Jacob Zuma, life in Nkandla had gone on as it had for decades: simply.
The village was isolated and underdeveloped, like its neighbours. Debates around politics, ethnicity and governance were as remote and as far removed as Pretoria was in distance.
Nkandla, which is in rural KwaZulu-Natal, is severely impoverished and ranks among the areas in the country where many children are dying and where basic services are lacking.
In Census 2011 data, 12 municipalities with below-average access to sanitation services had a significantly higher-than-average percentage of deaths of children under five; among them Nkandla and others in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, North West and Mpumalanga.
Nkandla, where Zuma’s homestead is, also ranks among the worst. Deaths of under-fives amounted to 20% of all deaths there. The census also shows: 62% of households rely on boreholes, rivers and springs, among things, for water; 14% have no formal toilet; and almost no one has a refuse removal service.
In a letter to City Press in October 1999, members of the Ngomo community in the Nkandla district wrote the following:
We are requesting you to publish the following grievances:
Lack of social development due to inefficiency of our councillor, Sam Myeza.
Lack of transparency: Myeza is unapproachable and he uses public funds for his own benefit.
We as the community request a speedy investigation into the use of public funds.
Myeza holds two positions, the councillorship and chieftaincy.
The former position suffers because of his concentration on his chieftaincy activities.
He appears to use the tribal authority house for his own spaza shop without consulting the community.
We reported this matter to the anti-corruption unit on September last year and we were even given a case number that we still have.
However, there has still been no action taken on the matter.
Concerned community members of Ngomo
In 2005, Kgabo Masehela, a research manager in the Assessment, Technology and Evaluation Education Research Programme, conducted a study about schooling in Nkandla, and wrote this article in City Press:
For me, Nkandla will forever be associated with abject poverty and the desperation on the faces of the children. Despite government policies, resources and structures to alleviate poverty and improve the quality of education, it seems nothing has filtered down to the poorest of the poor.
I asked a Grade 3 teacher about the living conditions of pupils.
The level of poverty was “terrible”, she said. “Many parents are unemployed and there is no work here. Many people just stay at home and grow dagga in the mountains, then the police arrest them. They just sit at home and drink traditional beer.”
The children’s results were poor. There was a tremendous gulf between the required skills and their capabilities. Of the 17 schools tested, only six had active feeding schemes. Absenteeism and dropout rates were high.
Some teachers were eager to improve conditions at the schools. They asked for advice.
I agonised over why a society as rich and frequently as generous as ours would leave these children in such destitution. Children in rural areas deserve the same quality of education as those in affluent suburbs. If the children of politicians were enrolled at these schools, things would definitely change.
If no drastic measures are taken, they will continue to experience pangs of hunger, inadequate schooling and crippling disease. They will be