President Jacob Zuma’s jetted off to Nigeria leaving behind a storm about his police minister declaring he has nothing to contribute towards the 20-million-euro security improvement to Zuma’s private home in Kwazulu/Natal.
Zuma has some fence mending to do with incoming Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari after xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa.
But the fallout with Africa’s biggest economy pales next to the row raging over the so-called Nkandla affair that’s dominated domestic politics these past four years.
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Police Minister Nathi Nhleko’s findings came as no surprise, given that he was reporting on the man at whose pleasure he serves.
Nevertheless his insistence that a swimming pool and chicken coup should be considered cost-free and necessary security upgrades to Zuma’s private home has outraged the opposition and many of the people living in poverty in South Africa 21 year after the end of apartheid.
The official opposition Democratic Alliance calls the police minister’s findings an insult to the South African people.
It plans to take legal action to support the report of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela that Zuma should repay the cost of private improvements to Nkandla because he’s unduly benefited
from the work on his home that also included a cattle enclosure, amphitheatre and visitors’ centre .
Nhleko’s report has been tabled for consideration in parliament, which has previously
descended into in chaos with opposition lawmakers demanding Zuma pay back the money.
Those demands are expected to persist.