Zuma says wife raped at Nkandla Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma

Jacob Zuma

Johannesburg. – South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma yesterday defended a US$23 million home security upgrade that has become a contentious election issue, saying some of the spending was necessary after criminals years ago set fire to his rural residence and raped his wife.
Speaking to reporters two days before the national vote, Mr Zuma launched a spirited defence against allegations from an anti-corruption watchdog that he overlooked gross misspending at his compound of thatched buildings in Nkandla, the remote village where he was born.

In March, public protector Thuli Madonsela said the 72-year-old president had “unduly benefited” from new features including a swimming pool and cattle pen. The allegations became a rallying cry for South Africa’s fragmented opposition parties and prompted coveted young voters to jeer Mr Zuma at ANC events.

“We’ll get to the bottom of any wrongdoing if there was,” Mr Zuma said yesterday. He said he would respond to Ms Madonsela’s report after a separate investigation by an office that reports to him.

He added that heightened security at the compound was justified, citing heinous crimes committed there before he was president.
“My homestead was burned twice during violence,” he said. “Criminals came and raped my wife.”

In the turbulent years after the ANC came to power in South Africa’s first free vote in 1994, Mr Zuma worked to broker peace between the ANC and a rival party in his home province, KwaZulu-Natal. Thousands died in clashes between the two sides.

But until yesterday Mr Zuma hadn’t discussed being a target of that violence. His spokesman, Mac Maharaj, wouldn’t elaborate on the incidents but said that several related court cases were pending.

Mr Zuma has four wives, in a country where polygamy is legal and culturally acceptable.
Yet ahead of his time as president, he has had run-ins with the law.

Mr Zuma was charged in 2005 with raping a friend’s daughter, but was later acquitted. He has also been accused of corruption tied to an arms-procurement deal. Those charges were dropped in 2009. Mr Zuma is expected to win a new five-year term as president tomorrow because many members of South Africa’s black majority see the ANC as the only party committed to lifting them out of poverty.

Mr Zuma said yesterday that only opposition parties and “very clever people” are concerned about misspending at his private home, not the masses of loyal ANC voters.

An Ipsos poll of 500 registered voters on April 23 found that 63,9 percent planned to vote for the ANC, down slightly from the 65,9 percent of the vote the party won in the last national elections in 2009.

Mr Zuma also said yesterday that he thought the party should work toward installing a female president.
If the ANC wins tomorrow Mr Zuma’s second five-year term would be the last he is allowed to serve under South Africa’s constitution. The race to succeed him as ANC leader has started already, say party leaders, and several of the top candidates are women.

The most prominent is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, chairwoman of the African Union’s executive arm and Mr Zuma’s ex-wife. He didn’t mention her or any other ANC members vying to succeed him by name yesterday.  – Wall Street Journal.

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