Nicholas Ngonyama gazes across the valley and his eye settles on a palatial cluster of sand-coloured buildings whose thatched roofs glow in the autumn sunshine. "I'm not happy," mutters the homeless, jobless man. "The country is not happy. Too much money was spent on one man's home. That money could have been spent improving the lives of the people. It feels like he is spitting in our face."
President Jacob Zuma's personal Xanadu, complete with stately pleasure-dome, has imposed itself on the landscape of one of South Africa's poorest areas, Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal. It covers the equivalent of eight and a half football pitches and has swallowed 246m rand (£13.7m) of taxpayers' money. "Nkandlagate" has become the defining scandal of Zuma's five-year reign and left him fighting for his political life in this week's elections.
"Chances are slim that the majority of people here will vote for him," says Ngonyama, 46, whose children live with his parents since he lost his home to a fire in 2009. His home is a shack without water and he looks with disbelief on Zuma's folly. "We don't have houses. We can't even begin to explain the reasoning behind the expenditure of such an amount of money for one man."
The Nkandla affair is seen by many as the ultimate symbol of an African National Congress that is rotten to the core. Abusing public funds to build private mansions was once the preserve of kleptocrats elsewhere in Africa, such as Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo or Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic. South Africa, under founding president Nelson Mandela, believed it was different. Full story...
Related posts:
President Jacob Zuma's personal Xanadu, complete with stately pleasure-dome, has imposed itself on the landscape of one of South Africa's poorest areas, Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal. It covers the equivalent of eight and a half football pitches and has swallowed 246m rand (£13.7m) of taxpayers' money. "Nkandlagate" has become the defining scandal of Zuma's five-year reign and left him fighting for his political life in this week's elections.
"Chances are slim that the majority of people here will vote for him," says Ngonyama, 46, whose children live with his parents since he lost his home to a fire in 2009. His home is a shack without water and he looks with disbelief on Zuma's folly. "We don't have houses. We can't even begin to explain the reasoning behind the expenditure of such an amount of money for one man."
The Nkandla affair is seen by many as the ultimate symbol of an African National Congress that is rotten to the core. Abusing public funds to build private mansions was once the preserve of kleptocrats elsewhere in Africa, such as Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo or Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic. South Africa, under founding president Nelson Mandela, believed it was different. Full story...
Related posts:
- Zuma accused of using taxpayer money to upgrade personal residence...
- Zuma implicated in South Africa Indian wedding plane scandal...
- Uproar over South African president's penis poster...
- Zuma under fire for fathering child out of wedlock...
- The sudden focus on Mandela's life casts South Africa’s current leaders in...
No comments:
Post a Comment