Taxpayers won't maintain Nkandla's chicken coops, cattle kraals or swimming pool

More than a decade after the Nkandla scandal shook South Africa, the Government has reopened one of the country's most infamous chapters of state spending, this time to make one thing unmistakably clear, taxpayers will not foot the bill for maintaining Jacob Zuma's private upgrades.

In an unusually blunt written reply to Parliament, the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Dean Macpherson dismissed suggestions that his department had neglected the former president's private residence. He said that the State has no responsibility for maintaining Nkandla.

"It is not our responsibility to maintain chicken coops, cattle kraals, amphitheatres, swimming pools, visitor centres or any other non-security upgrades that took place at Nkandla," said Macpherson.

The response came after Phumlani Kubukeli from MK Party asked whether the Department had allowed Zuma's residence to deteriorate through a failure to carry out regular maintenance, despite its status as a National Key Point, and whether President Cyril Ramaphosa should intervene.

Instead of engaging the allegation that the property had deteriorated, the Minister turned the spotlight back onto the scandal that made Nkandla synonymous with wasteful public spending.

"This is something that is well articulated in the Public Protector report in 2014, where it found that R246 million of public funds had been improperly spent,"said Mcpherson.

The response deliberately revives the findings of former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's landmark 2014 report, reminding Parliament that R246 million in public money had been improperly spent on upgrades at the private residence.

Quoting directly from that report, the Minister noted that the Public Protector had found the:

"expenditure incurred by the state in respect of the measures taken, including buildings and other items constructed or installed by the DPW at the request of the SAPS and DOD, many of which went beyond what was reasonably required for the President’s security, was unconscionable, excessive, and caused a misappropriation of public funds,' These upgrades should never have been the Department’s responsibility in the first place," he said.

Instead of treating the parliamentary question as a routine maintenance inquiry, the Minister anchored his refusal in one of the most damaging findings ever made against Zuma's administration. He argued that many of the structures should never have become the State's responsibility in the first place.

He then drew a sharp line between what government will pay for and what it will not. According to the reply, the State remains responsible only for security-related infrastructure requested by the South African Police Service, including physical security installations, access-control systems and accommodation for presidential protection personnel. Everything else falls squarely on the former president.

"How the former President wishes to maintain his property is entirely within his discretion and not the responsibility of the State. Public Works and Infrastructure cannot be party to such maintenance. The Department is aware of its obligations in terms of regulations that governs regular maintenance at National Key Points and at private residence of former Heads of State,"McPherson said.

The Department added that if there was any uncertainty about the State's obligations, Zuma was welcome to approach either the Presidency or the Minister's office for clarification.

He also rejected any suggestion that Ramaphosa should intervene, stating that there had been no failure on the Department's part and therefore no basis for presidential involvement.

"There has been no failure and thus there is no need for the President to be involved in such a matter,"he said.

The reply amounts to one of the clearest statements yet that government considers the controversial non-security upgrades at Nkandla to be a closed chapter as far as public funding is concerned.

While taxpayers will continue to fund security measures required for the protection of former heads of state, the Department has made it clear that maintaining swimming pools, cattle kraals, amphitheatres and other disputed features is Zuma's responsibility, not the public's.