MADONSELA'S REPORT NOT 'ALPHA AND OMEGA'

 

Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula has accused Public Protector Thuli Madonsela of pursuing a political agenda in the way she went about her investigation into President Jacob Zuma’s R246 million Nkandla homestead.

Speaking during an Mpumalanga ANCYL fundraising dinner at the Mbombela Stadium on Friday night, Mbalula said that Madonsela’s report was not the “alpha and omega” – meaning that it could be challenged.
Madonsela found that Zuma and his family unduly benefited from the project and asked him to pay back some of the money spent on upgrades, but Zuma has said he won’t pay because he did not ask for them.
Zuma wrote to parliamentary Speaker, Max Sisulu, on Wednesday saying that he would give a report to parliament about government’s intervention after receiving a report from the Special Investigating Unit, which he directed to probe the security upgrades.
Mbalula said: “Uyazenzela u Madonsela (Madonsela is doing as she likes).”
“We are not judging her on her report. Zuma never said he doesn’t want to be judged. He said I give myself to you to investigate. It doesn’t mean that her report is alpha and omega and can’t be judged. I have never seen a Chapter 9 institution that judges you, arrives at a conclusion and goes to the public to try to address how it is right,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula said that Madonsela accounted to parliament and should have finished her report and “shut up”, instead of briefing the media.
“You then account to parliament because you believe in your report that it’s not malicious. The reason it was questioned and questionable, is because of the tactics that you apply.
“If you come to us masked as representing a genuine and objective Nkandla report, it’s a political agenda. You can’t defeat what was democratically elected through the back door. The ANC was elected by the masses and can’t be removed through the back door,” Mbalula said.
He also lashed out at opposition parties for having no manifestos and programmes of action, but relying on the Nkandla report to sway the vote in their favour.
“We rely in the course of our struggle that our history will speak for us. What the ANC has done in the past 20 years, comrades, is something that’s irreplaceable. That’s why our enemies have gone quiet. They want to segment the revolution and the struggle and say this period belongs to Mandela, this one belongs to Thabo Mbeki. It’s the same country, it’s the same organisation,” Mbalula said.
Mbalula said that President Zuma had to be defended as a matter of principle, and labelled ANC veterans who criticised him as “opportunists.”
He said that it appeared some comrades were still harbouring disappointment at Zuma’s election in Mangaung.
“We were persuaded to stand and it can’t be that because we lost with our eyes open, the ANC that was elected there is not an ANC. That agenda is reactionary and backward and must be kicked out of the window. I’m not saying that because I’m begging for a position,” Mbalula said.