UK gives £19 million aid to South Africa - its president spends
£17.5million on his palace
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' - 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.
