Cape Town - The letters of “reprimand” President Jacob Zuma sent to Cabinet ministers involved in the Nkandla scandal are a joke, and do not constitute a reprimand by any normal understanding of the word, Democratic Alliance leader, Mmusi Maimane, said on Sunday.

“The letters reinforce President Zuma’s arrogant refusal to accept that he did anything wrong. The letters do not specifically reprimand the ministers for their involvement in this unacceptable abuse of public funds, and for their role over the course of several years in trying to hide facts and shield the president from accountability,” Maimane said.

The reprimand should have been specific in nature, specifying what each minister did wrong – allowing the abuse of public funds in their departments, not exercising sufficient control and oversight over the project, allowing for the outrageous cost overruns, publicly trying to cover up facts and avoid accountability, making statements that were later proved to be totally untrue, and more, he said.

The DA had forwarded the letters to its legal team and asked them to advise on whether they constituted an adequate reprimand as envisioned by the public protector.

“If not, we will not hesitate to seek to compel the president to reprimand these ministers fully and thoroughly. A reprimand should be a severe rebuke and should be specific in nature.

“No South African will consider these letters as anything close to the reprimand that the public protector and the Constitutional Court had in mind. This is another insult to the public, and President Zuma is once again mistaken if he thinks this will draw a line under the matter,” Maimane said.

In the three identical letters to Public Works Minister, Thulas Nxesi, and former police minister and now Arts and Culture Minister, Nathi Mthethwa, and former public works minister Geoff Doidge, Zuma refers to “the public protector’s report on the investigation into allegations of improper or irregular conduct relating to the security upgrades at Nkandla”.

He states that the Constitutional Court had affirmed the public protector’s directive that “I am required to reprimand the ministers involved in the Nkandla project”.

He ends off by stating that pursuant to this: “I hereby deliver the reprimand required. I am doing so to each of the ministers indicated by the report.”

In her March 2014 report titled “Secure in comfort”, Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, found, among other things, that Zuma had unduly benefited from the over R246 million of taxpayers’ money spent on building work at his private homestead at Nkandla in rural KwaZulu-Natal and that he should pay back a portion of the money.

After almost two years of wrangling and court cases, the matter eventually ended up in the Constitutional Court which ruled unanimously on March 31 that: “The president [Zuma] thus failed to uphold, defend, and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. This failure is manifest from the substantial disregard for the remedial action taken against him by the public protector in terms of her constitutional powers.”

The court ordered that Zuma comply with the public protector’s report and pay back a portion the money, and set a time frame for him to do so.

ANA