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It is a nation racked by poverty,
where 13 million people survive on less than £1 a day, and two million
have no access to a toilet.
Yet
as his people struggle in squalor, South African president Jacob Zuma
has sparked outrage by spending £17.5 million to upgrade his rural
family home.
Lavish
works – which include the construction of 31 new houses, an underground
bunker accessed by lifts and a helipad – will cost almost as much as the
£19 million British taxpayers send to South Africa in annual aid.
Not quite right...South African president Jacob
Zuma continues to have a lavish lifestyle despite many parts of his
country struggling for survival
The costly upgrade to Zuma’s
once-humble home in the village of Nkandla includes Astroturf sports
fields and tennis courts, a gymnasium and state-of-the art security
systems, including fingerprint-controlled access pads.
And nearby roads have benefited from a further £40 million of improvements.
When
African journalists revealed the astronomical cost of the work, Zuma’s
ministers turned on the whistle-blowers, saying that revealing the
details of ‘top secret’ documents was illegal.
Originally
the cost of the project, which began two years ago, was put at £500,000
– but it has since skyrocketed. South African taxpayers are footing
most of the bill, although Zuma, a polygamist with four wives and at
least 20 children, is said to be contributing £700,000 of his own money –
a stretch on his annual £185,000 salary.
However, he also receives a
controversial £1.2million in ‘spousal support’ for his wives – despite
recently calling on fellow politicians to tighten their belts – and pays
only a peppercorn rent of £560 on the tribally owned plot in the
Zululand hills where his mansion sits.
Zuma
has named his residence a ‘national key point’ – a status invented by
the previous paranoid apartheid government – which means it is entitled
to security measures ‘in the interests of the nation’.
Bewildering: Work continues on Zuma's 'palace' as 31 buildings in his residence get given the go ahead
Last week he was grilled in
parliament about what he and his family were costing the nation, and
struggled to answer, protesting that he was unaware of the scale of the
work.
‘All the
buildings and every room we use in that residence were built by
ourselves as family and not by the government,’ he protested. He did not
know the amount spent on bunkers, claiming: ‘I don’t know the figures;
that’s not my job.’
Under
pressure, Zuma has been forced to agree to two investigations: one to
probe the spiralling costs at Nkandla, the other to see if there was a
breach of parliamentary spending rules.
Support: Zuma, pictured left, remains high in
popularity in South Africa much to do with his friendship with Nelson
Mandela (right)
‘Nkandlagate’ – as the state-owned
media have been banned from calling it – is just the latest scandal to
engulf the 70-year-old African National Congress leader. In 2004 he
faced trial with his financial adviser Schabir Shaik over racketeering
and corruption claims for accepting tens of thousands of pounds in
bribes from European arms firms.
Shaik
was imprisoned for 15 years, but Zuma’s case was ‘discontinued’ after
complicated legal wrangling – even though a judge said there was
‘overwhelming’ evidence of a corrupt relationship between the two
men.The following year, a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman accused him of
rape. Although he was acquitted, Zuma’s ludicrous claim that he took a
shower after sex to prevent contracting HIV made him a laughing stock.
His
personal life also came under scrutiny following the 2000 suicide of
his first wife, who left a note describing ‘24 years of hell’ with him,
and again after the illegitimate birth of another child in 2009. He
accused the media of invading his privacy when revealing the scandal.
Meanwhile,
South Africa is in an increasingly parlous state, having had its credit
rating downgraded following industrial unrest. Workers at the Marikana
platinum mine were mown down and killed by armed police last month when
they dared to demand better pay. A truck-drivers’ strike later led to
more deaths, and last week thousands of farmworkers downed tools in
protest at their £4.85 day-rate.
Yet
Zuma – who glories in his nickname ‘100 per cent Zulu boy’ – still has
substantial support among the people, bolstered by his freedom-fighter
credentials, having spent ten years imprisoned on Robben Island
alongside Nelson Mandela.
Britain
is committed to spending an average of £19 million a year in aid on
South Africa until 2015, mainly aimed at reducing HIV. But the
Department for International Development is examining how it spends the
UK’s aid budget, and recently announced plans to slash the controversial
£280 million a year it sends to India
