Nkandla: Ad hoc Committee to be Established

The National Assembly has stated on Tuesday that an ad hoc committee will be established in order to review the response of President Jacob Zuma with regards to the reports on his Nkandla homestead in KwaZulu-Natal.

On Tuesday, it was announced in parliament that an ANC draft resolution had been decided upon to establish the ad hoc committee which would be used as a forum to discuss the president’s response to the multiple reports on the controversial Nkandla upgrades, including those of the security cluster task team, the Special Investigating Unit and Thuli Madonsela’s report on the matter.

The Public Protector, however, expressed the fact that the president’s response to the reports last week made it explicitly clear that he was not commenting on her team’s report. Due to the fact that the ad hoc committee is to be established in order to merely discuss the response of the president, it stands therefore that her report will not be discussed.

Speaking of the president’s response, Madonsela said, “If he is not commenting, the status remains unresolved. To the extent that there is no comment in there, we don’t know what happens to the findings. It is a document that leaves issues open and we don’t know now.” She also added that it is now up to parliament to do their job and take matters further. “The next part actually is for parliament to evaluate, not me,” she said.

The Democratic Alliance’s Mmusi Maimane expressed strong displeasure with the decision to set up an ad hoc committee, explaining that it would apparently not deal with the matter fully due to the committee’s  restriction to the president’s response being the only matter to be discussed. “This reply was completely inadequate. It failed to provide a comprehensive response to the Public Protector’s report, nor provided detailed steps on how the president intended to act on her recommendations,” he said.