Zuma corruption monument the Nkandla of North West

16 February 2017

The 6 metre tall bronze statue of Jacob Zuma, which I have called a monument to corruption and unemployment, will be the Nkandla of the North West. The statue will be a multi-million rand splurge of public money, to exult and deify Jacob Zuma, taking money from the public and leaving the people poorer.

In Gopane, where Supra’s government wants to build the enormous statue, people live in dire conditions, and the millions of rands for the statue should instead be spent on service delivery and job creation.

A statue to Jacob Zuma in Gopane is just as useless to the people of Gopane, as Nkandla is to the people of KZN. A statue of Jacob Zuma will chase tourists away, not attract them.

People in Gopane, are forced to still use the inhumane and dehumanising bucket system, because Supra’s government doesn’t care enough to have proper sanitation. The statue-millions could alleviate hundreds of bucket toilets in Gopane instead of building a monument to corruption.

While sanitation and sewage infrastructure lies broken in Gopane, the statue-millions could rather get a whole sanitation plant back up to full steam.

Water and sanitation is so bad in the area Supra wants to build this statue, that the Public Protector has had to investigate and make findings against the local government; yet nothing has changed since the Public Protector’s report, and instead a statue to Jacob Zuma is in the offing.

Residents of Lehurutse, near the Zuma statue site, have faced water shedding for the past two years without any solution and yet the ANC government would rather build a statue than deliver water to these communities.

Just like Nkandla is now the mark of corruption on the hills of KZN, so the Zuma statue will be a monument to corruption on North West’s landscape.

Issued by Joe McGluwa, DA NW Leader, 16 February 2017