Reports of South Africa’s President using state money to refurbish his private apartment at Nkandla, was a major corruption scandal that rocked his presidency for the better part of his first term in Office.
The refurbishment of Jacob Zuma's private home, including a pool and cattle enclosure, according to the BBC, cost taxpayers about $23m (£13.8m).
The allegation is still being investigated but Zuma insists he is innocent despite his indictment by the independent public Prosecutor,
Pundits predict the corruption allegation risks dealing Zuma’s ANC party a slight electoral blow, in terms of support, as South Africa heads for the polls today, May 7, 2014, to elect a new President for another five-year term.
The corruption allegation notwithstanding, the incumbent party has been tipped to retain the presidency. But Zuma isn’t risking it. He appears to be playing every hand towards ensuring convincing political victory.
At a party breakfast meeting on Monday May 5, 2014, Zuma revealed to the crowd how one of his wives, a few years ago, was raped in a robbery attack in the now controversial Nkandla homestead. “My homestead was burned twice during a violent outbreak. Secondly, criminals came, raped my wife during the time I was still the MEC." Mr Zuma revealed.
The 1998 rape incident is well in the psyche of South Africans despite the minimal press it got at the time. South African laws protect rape victims from media exposure. National broadcaster SABC was the only media house that reported the incident briefly when it happened.
It has been more than a decade since the crime occurred. So one wonders why President Zuma would drum up, at a public gathering, a traumatic incident suffered by one of his wives almost 16 years ago. Did the President really think about the emotional consequences of his statement, or was he craftily exploiting his wife’s misfortune for political advantage?
President Jacob Zuma is known to have had four wives at the time. So which one of them was the victim?
In the same year of the alleged incident, Mr Zuma divorced one of his wives, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the current African Union chairperson.
It is also on public record that one of the wives, Kate Mantsho Zuma, committed suicide in 2000, two years after the incident.
Although I can understand the desire of the President to defend his profligacy to save is skin, I find it very hard to understand why he would put the reputation of his entire family on the line by making reference to the rape incident.
Were South Africans ever going to be told this story by Mr Zuma were it not time for elections?
Even if Zuma had no intentions of exploiting the incident for sympathy votes, shouldn’t he have restrained himself from exposing his marriage and entire family to public ridicule? What happened to protecting the sanctity of his marriage?
Is the rape of one’s wife a subject to discuss with party folks or justification for blowing public funds? Has the President not succeeded in exposing his wives to public ridicule? Or perhaps the reputation of the said wife doesn’t matter anymore?
I have no doubt many South Africans will be wondering, even after the elections, which of the President’s wives suffered the ordeal. It will certainly be his responsibility to give answers or suffer the consequences of people tagging all his wives as rape victims.
I believe the President should have taken the flack by himself, as far as the allegation of financial misappropriation against him is concerned.
He shouldn’t have needlessly dragged his wives into the matter.
He must show he has some little respect and integrity left in him, rather than wallow in the mud just for the sake of politics.
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