24 November 2012
| UPDATED: 23:50 GMT, 24 November 2012 Comments (480)
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.
More than 150,000 forced off benefits after refusing to participate in Iain Duncan-Smith's back-to-work scheme 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’ – a status invented by the previous paranoid apartheid government – 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. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238017/UK-gives-19million-aid-South-Africa--president-spends-17-5million-palace.html#ixzz2DPkErDlj
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Apocalypse South Africa LIKE THIS BLOG2 William By William Ernest Cox Posted Sep 24, 2008 in Politics 1 comment
+ Johannesburg 24September 2008 (Heritage Day) Review JOHANNESBURG
- 2 May 2008Sonny Cox APOCALYPSE SOUTH AFRICA…..“Apocalypse Now, a movie (1979) by Francis Ford Coppola . This surreal, hallucinatory account of the Vietnam War is based loosely on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness . It follows a U.S. captain on his mission to assassinate a rebel officer, played by Marlon Brando, conducting his own independent war in the heart of the jungle“…... The total onslaught against civil society in South Africa is based on politics.
It is a revolution of classism ideals based on socialism.The ruling class were all taken out of their own depth and placed in another aristocratic league in society. Hence, affirmative action, BEE and racial equity.They have outclassed their own capabilities and are headed for destruction.They tend to blame their failures on Apartheid, which, unfortunately died 14 years ago in 1994.South Africa is soon to be plunged into tribal strife which has plagued African tribes since eternity.
The lead up to the ANC NEC conference in Polokwane in December 2007 bore testimony of the future of politics in this country.The Xhosa’s were the forerunners of this young democracy, but they failed to achieve because this decade will see the Zulu’s taking over the political arena with the arrogance and corruption of their members in parliament and State in general.Because of their BEE and equity drives they have turned willing allies into foes.The next decade will experience the political power in the hands of the Zulu’s as the ruling party.
The Zulu people are known for their dominance amongst the black tribes of Africa, particularly the South African region, where they drove their opponents as far North as Rhodesia in the last two to three Centuries.President Thabo Mbebi’s silent diplomacy of Robert Mugabe’s atrocities in Zimbabwe over the last decade is going to be a deciding factor of how the Zulu’s will treat the Xhosa’s in future.Faction division and in-fighting has been the order of the day for Centuries and only the future holds the secrets to the South African Holocaust and destruction of democracy and well earned freedom.
Will the whites have any role to play in the further destruction of the economy and infrastructure of this wonderful nation?Where non delivery has become the order of the day! WEC (C) 2008 Posted by Sonny Cox at 9:29 AM
Labels: Apocalypse, atrocities, corruption, destruction, genocide, holocaust., Jacob Zuma, Robert Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki 8 comments: Sonny Cox said... President Thabo Mbeki is to become one of the top ten role players in the destruction of Southern Africa!He assisted with a shipment of illegal arms to Zimbabwe! May 17, 2008 1:22 PM Comments by author On thursday 25 September 2008 at 11:00 President Thabo Mbeki and 11 ol his ministers will fromally resign from SA politics. Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/blog/1125#ixzz2DPkbsRR5 - - - - - COMMENTS BY SONNY COX THE RISE AND FALL OF JACOB ZUMA OF KZN SOUTH AFRICA. DOES 'OLA' (WELLS) LONDON SUPPLY THE NKANDLA TUCK SHOP WITH ICE CREAM?
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