COSATU welcomes President Zuma’s commitment to pay back some of the money used for Nkandla upgrades

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted and welcomes President Jacob Zuma’s proposal to bring to an end to the drawn-out legal controversy regarding the public protector’s March 2014 report on Nkandla.

This is a welcome intervention by the President and will go a long way to assuring the nation that the president is prepared to listen and take political responsibility as a leader of the nation.

It will also deny the opportunistic opposition parties oxygen to bolster their elections campaigns. They will have to find real policy proposals to argue their positions in public. This matter unfortunately became a swamp, where all political charlatans were swimming in to get the public’s attention and was used to vilify both the ANC and the president.

This episode should serve as a lesson for government, of what is possible if greedy service providers and senior government managers are inadequately supervised, they will run amok. This mismanagement of state resources should never be allowed to happen again and we hope this intervention by the president will bring closure to the matter.

We still reiterate our position that all those found to have manipulated the system and participated in this mucky saga of excessive runaway spending should be held accountable.

Statement issued by Sizwe Pamla, COSATU national spokesperson, 3 February 2016