THE parliamentary ad hoc committee to consider the security upgrades at Nkandla has completed its final report. Consisting entirely of ANC MPs, it has officially absolved President Jacob Zuma of any wrongdoing in relation to the massive overspending on the project and instead blamed apparently unsupervised officials.

This outcome was so predictable that easily the most sensible thing was to stay away from proceedings on Tuesday afternoon and just catch the press briefing afterwards. My timing, alas, has never been fantastic and I strolled into the room an hour or so earlier than necessary and was unfortunately subjected to the horrifying tedium of it all. It was like watching whitewash dry. 

For an indication of the tenor of the committee's final moments, consider this platitude from Mathole Motshekga:

"Chairperson, I just want to say that the recommendations correctly capture the fact that executive authority resides with the President and that the actions recommended to him are actually in line with our oversight authority over the President of the executive and also emphasises the checks and balances which are the chief features of our constitutional democracy but also these recommendations capture very well the centrality of accountability of the President and the executive to Parliament and therefore, I think, they correctly capture the spirit of the Constitution when it talks about, in reference to Chapter Nine institutions, the spirit which says that there must be support and strengthening of constitutional democracy."

There was quite a bit more in that vein from Motshekga, but you get the idea. Or not. 

The eventual press briefing with committee chair Cedric Frolick was no better. Perhaps it was because he was tired and, worn down by proceedings at the end of a long day, had lapsed into obfuscatory babble. His answers to reporters' questions contained very little of substance but they dragged on and on; interminably elliptical jobs, they dived in and out of sense like seals attacking a fishing net. (Given that readers have had to endure a sample from Motshekga, I have included, for those brave enough to stomach it, one such answer verbatim at the end of this piece.)

But finally there came life. Frolick took one last question, and was asked if he had learned one single thing about Nkandla since the committee began its work.

He paused for the slightest of moments, sighed briefly and then hastily summonsed from deep within his being a surprising approximation of, if not exactly moral outrage, then certainly concern over what had taken place at Zuma's country pile.

"This is a classical example," he began, "and it's the first time in my 15 to 16 years in Parliament that I've seen that a project of this nature can be mismanaged to the extent that it has been done. Completely, completely mismanaged. You get the sense that certain people, they took decisions and make rules as they were going along. 

"There's specific instances in the report where you do find that people were completely reckless with the way that they applied the policies and the prescripts that were supposed to be deployed. And it raises bigger questions as to exactly what it is happening in some of the key government departments.

"If officials could do this in one project . . . There's other projects that is currently unfolding where officials also have immense responsibilities with billions and trillions of rands. Then we must ask serious questions - and that has been exposed in this process - about the commitment of people to do what they're supposed to do but, more importantly also, for the relevant executive authorities to ensure that those officials under their watch indeed report to them when they are supposed to, and they indeed take the necessary steps against them as it arises. 

"I do believe that in this instance if, right at the initial outset, there was proper oversight of what was happening, we would not have reached the situation where more than R200m was just blown on one specific project. And what you see there, in front of you, I can honestly tell you, is not worth a third of that money. So, it was a huge cash-pot where people simply dived in. They bent all the rules and they basically did as they pleased. And that is completely . . . it's unacceptable."

There it was. The crux of the matter. More than R200m splurged on his country home and the President did not even get our money's worth.

Alarmingly, it now appeared that yet more money could be spent at Nkandla in terms of the committee's ruling that, because they weren't done by the proper "security experts" in the first place, the security upgrades must be reassessed by those with the necessary expertise - that is, the State Security Agency and the SA Police Service - to see if they pass muster. If not, then . . . the upgrades get upgraded. 

Although Frolick was at pains to stress that the referral of the upgrades for reassessment was not a licence to "go and spend more money", it would appear that the process here on forward was going to be all very hush-hush. If there was any further diving into that huge cash-pot, well, we just wouldn't know about it.

The thinking here is this: in terms of current policy, the findings by the "security experts" must be reported back to Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence which - very cloak and dagger - meets behind close doors and whose members are bound by an oath of confidentiality to keep their mouths shut about irregular expenditure on such security features as chicken coops and swimming pools.

***

THE President, as usual, was absent from Parliament during all this, and there has been a great deal of concern that he is failing in his constitutional duties regarding accountability. But - surprise, surprise - he was back here last week for the annual address to the National Council of Provinces. 

The occasion was widely reported as his first appearance in Parliament since his disrupted question and answer session in the National Assembly on August 21. But this was not strictly true. Zuma did make an appearance for Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's medium-term budget speech last month. 

The NCOP address was evidently an occasion of sorts, and the normally empty public gallery was now stuffed with dignitaries and guests - so much so that Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane had to drop by the slummy press gallery in his quest for a seat. "I just want to see if [Zuma's] still alive," he explained. 

The President was. The same, alas, could not be said of his speech - which was mainly a dull and lacklustre rehashing of his State of the Nation address in June. But somewhere between the first and second time that Zuma reminded his audience that South Africa had a good story to tell, word reached the press gallery via SMS that, over in the National Assembly, the Speaker Baleka Mbete was, once again, having management difficulties and, as a result, was in the throes of another almighty ding-dong with the Economic Freedom Fighters.

Given that a fresh rumpus involving the challenged and imperious Mbete trumped a second-hand speech from Zuma, reporters wanted pronto out of the NCOP and into the National Assembly.

Sadly, a "security expert" prevented us from leaving. He was a large individual and the psycho stare and squiggly wire coming out of one ear suggested that he was not a regular Parliament security staffer but more than likely one of the President's heavies. Quite why it fell in the remit of his duties to order smaller folk to sit down, shut up and listen to his boss was lost on us. Nevertheless compliance followed. 

Eventually Zuma's speech shuddered to a halt and I bolted off to the National Assembly. Too late. Mbete was done with embarrassing herself. What had happened, I later pieced together, was this:

The EFF had wanted to introduce a motion without notice concerning a possible conflict of interest should the Presidency receive a report from the Farlam Commission of Inquiry because, at the time of the Marikana massacre of striking Lonmin miners, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa had been a Lonmin shareholder.

Mbete had, however, ruled that there had been a mistake in the "processing" of motions and the EFF should not have attempted to introduce this one. Cue uproar as EFF MPs rose to object - among them Andile Mngxitama. (He's the MP not above a spot of farm-burning by hip hop artists to level the playing fields.) Mbete apparently ordered him to sit down at least ten times. He refused, so she ordered him to leave the House. He stayed put, so she summarily suspended him for five days.

Unmoved, Mngxitama remained in the House. Unmoved. Popular sentiment is with him on this one.

***

HERE verbatim - as promised or threatened - is that Cedric Frolick soundbite from the press briefing after the ad hoc committee on the Nkandla security upgrades had completed its business. He had been asked to comment on claims by opposition parties that the committee's work had been a "whitewash" - not because opposition MPs had walked out the committee but because it had not used all its powers to "widen its mandate" and call in its own witnesses and conduct its own investigation rather than rely on the contents of the reports it examined.

"The committee," Frolick responded, "acted within the resolution that was passed and reconfirmed by the House when the extension was granted. And may I also indicate that the opposition, of course, have their own views. I don't want to substantiate their views. They are quite entitled to arrive at certain views. But the main point of contention was essentially two - between the majority party and the opposition - and that was contained in the report. 

"Now, the powers that is available under Rule1.3.8 may be considered by committee to be utilised and, in this respect, we must also keep in mind that we must not undermine those institutions that has been created through the Constitution and through the relevant acts of Parliament, and that includes the Public Protector and her report that is there. 

"It includes the [Special Investigating Unit]. It includes a report from a separate arm of the state that is the executive and it includes a [Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence] report of Parliament itself. Now, the question that then arises is, if you say, ‘Okay, let's have all these reports of us. We don't like that one, we don't like one, we just concentrate on this one,' then we will do the Constitution a disservice. 

"What is important is that everything that was contained in that report is derived from those reports in front of us. If a scenario would have unfolded, and I want to go back to the comment that was made, ‘overturn [the Public Protector's report]', we didn't overturn anything. We arrived at our own conclusions. 

"If we'd called certain people here, then I want to use the example of the SIU, for instance. The SIU is currently proceeding. They didn't wait for Parliament. In terms of the SIU Act, there is processes currently underway and I think certain dates has been confirmed as to when the matter of a civil action is going to be in front of the courts in KwaZulu-Natal. So that process is continuing. Parliament cannot intervene in that process. 

"Okay, now once you say, ‘Okay, SIU, you have done this, and you are busy with those processes, but anyway, you know what? We actually want to call some of those people that you, now, are already pursuing in terms of different types of civil and other actions.' 

"And you say to them, ‘Come and sit here.' That person comes here, and that person contradicts the statement and evidence that he or she has given to the Special investigating Unit, and say, ‘No, no, no, but I've never said so.' 

"Or, if anyone that have interacted with the Public Protector comes and say that, ‘Know what? I didn't say that to the Public Protector', then they've left Parliament in a situation where they would have gone back to say that, ‘Well, then we must review the report of the Public Protector.' 

"We must say to the SIU, ‘Stop your procedures that you're busy with,'and they're doing it in terms of the SIU Act. ‘Stop whatever you're doing, Parliament is going to do it now, and you know what? Thank you for the report but we feel at this instance you cannot continue like that.'

"We must give due regard to all the different institutions that has been created to give expression to the specific mandates under the constitution but also in terms of the laws of Parliament."

Before he entered politics, Frolick was a teacher in Port Elizabeth.

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