EFF targets Zuma’s Nkandla residence
Malema says they are not going to play nice with people who play rough with them, with the EFF moving to attach Zuma’s Nkandla homestead.
EFF leader Julius Malema has announced that he has directed the party’s lawyers to seize former President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead.
Malema said this is about legal costs that various courts ordered Zuma to pay to the EFF.
WILL JACOB ZUMA’S NKANDLA HOMESTEAD BE ATTACHED?
Addressing EFF supporters outside the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg on Tuesday, 26 November, Malema said they are not going to play nice with people who play rough with them.
On Monday, he had referred to Zuma’s MK Party as its number one enemy as prominent party leaders have ditched the EFF to join the Zuma-led party.
“All the cases we won against Jacob Zuma, he never paid the legal fees. Zuma is owing us legal fees, we’ve got an order that he must pay us our money because we defeated him in court. Now, he has not complied with the order to pay our money.
“We have just instructed our lawyers to go and attach Nkandla so that the man [Zuma] pays back our money. We want our money that Zuma owes us from here at the Constitutional Court, the High Court in Pretoria and everywhere else where we have been winning against Zuma they said he must pay us legal fees but he never did,” Malema said.
“We are not in church here, people cannot fight us and in exchange we say we must give them roses,” he added.
CONCOURT ORDERED ZUMA TO PAY R7.8 MILLION FOR SECURITY UPGRADES
Former president Zuma‘s homestead in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, was renovated at the cost of nearly R250 million.
Due to Zuma’s insistence on security upgrades and the infamous ‘fire pool’, the Nkandla complex in rural KwaZulu-Natal has been at the centre of multiple controversies over the years.
Security costs on the president’s home still fall under the remit of being legally funded by the taxpayer; however, Zuma argued that particular renovations were necessary for his safety.
In 2016, the Constitutional Court ordered Zuma to pay back R7.8 million for upgrades to his homestead, including constructing a visitors centre, an amphitheatre, a cattle kraal, a chicken run, and a swimming pool.
The state reportedly spent nearly R10 million on the five facilities, which then-public protector advocate Thuli Madonsela deemed non-security-related as the upgrades were intended.
Zuma was not required to pay what the Department of Public Works had already paid for the five facilities.
In South Africa, the Ministerial Handbook requires the minister of public works to implement the recommended security arrangement at privately owned residences of various public officials in conjunction with the South African Police Service.