Jacob
Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, the President of South
Africa and current president of the governing political party, the African National Congress (ANC), was
charged with rape in
the Johannesburg
High Court
on 6 December 2005. The accuser, Zuma's deceased friend's daughter, was known
by Zuma to be HIV positive. On 8 May 2006, the Court dismissed the
charges, agreeing that the sexual act in question was consensual. During the
trial, Zuma admitted to having unprotected
sex with his accuser but claimed that he took a shower afterwards to cut
the risk of contracting HIV. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma_rape_trial
Photo and video
evidence presented to a commission investigating the police shooting that left
34 striking miners dead strongly suggests that weapons were placed next to the
bodies of dead miners, in an attempt to make it appear that the police had no
choice but to fire on them, according to lawyers representing the families of
the victims. A commission of inquiry has been hearing testimony from police
officials, mining companies, union leaders and witnesses to try to determine what happened
on Aug. 16, when the police opened fire on platinum miners engaged in a wildcat
strike for higher wages in Marikana, 80 miles northwest of Johannesburg. The
killings, so reminiscent of apartheid-era
shootings of protesters, set off widespread outrage and copycat strikes at other mines
among workers angry at the persistent poverty
and inequality that have come to characterize
post-apartheid South Africa.
Four's a crowd: Mr Zuma poses with his three other wives (from left)
Nompumelo Ntuli, Thobeka Mabhija and Sizakele Khumalo. All were at the
wedding to his fourth current spouse
Zuma given ultimatum over multi-million home
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/+Zuma+given+ultimatum+over+multi+million+home/-/688340/1612870/-/6is2jb/-/index.html
By Agencies
Posted Tuesday, November 6 2012 at 10:37
Posted Tuesday, November 6 2012 at 10:37
The Democratic Alliance (DA) added – in a statement signed by its leader Hellen Zille – that should President Zuma fail to provide explanation by November 7, he and the government would face legal action “for blatant abuse of power”.
“This is state-sponsored corruption on an unprecedented scale. We cannot let him get away with it,” said Ms Zille, in a statement released Sunday evening.
Ms Zille said they had written to President Zuma on October 16 asking for “details on how much was spent, on what, by whom and under what provision of the law”.
The DA leader says all they got was an acknowledgement of the receipt of their letter, which has prompted them to give President Zuma the ultimatum.
South African President Jacob Zuma (C) dancing in traditional Zulu dress
during the wedding to his new wife, Ms Bongi Ngema (EPA)
“If there is no substantive response by close of business on Wednesday, we will instruct our lawyers to make preparations to take him and the government to court over what is now known as ‘Nkandlagate’,” she noted.
South Africa’s opposition gives Zuma ultimatum over pricey home
President Zuma has not yet responded publicly to the ultimatum by the DA. However, in the first comments since the DA announced that they would undertake “an oversight visit” to his home, President Zuma said through his Spokesperson Mac Maharaj that the visit was “highly questionable and mischievous”.
'Racist publicity stunt'
According to Mr Maharaj, the Office of the Presidency received information from a DA official saying Ms Zille intended to deliver letters to Mr Zuma at his home in Nkandla on Sunday.
Mr Maharaj said the DA was asked to deliver the letter to President Zuma’s office in Pretoria, but they declined to do so. Instead, he added, the DA informed the media that its delegation was going to inspect the upgrade of Mr Zuma’s residence.
“The Presidency is and has always been steadfast in its commitment to maintaining courteous and constructive working relations with all political parties. In this instance, regrettably, the Presidency is left with the impression that the DA's conduct smacks (sic) of a disingenuous publicity gimmick,” said Mr Maharaj in the statement.
Fourth first lady: The 70-year-old polygamist premier dances with his
newest wife at a ceremony attended by his three other spouses
The DA’s decision to visit President Zuma’s home was condemned by the ANC and other organisations allied to the ruling party. The South African Communist Party (SACP) described the visit as “a racist publicity stunt” while the Congress for South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said it was a “hypocritical” move by a party that never “marched against the many ridiculous privileges enjoyed by those who murdered thousands during apartheid”.
With local residents in Nkandla and ANC supporters having already threatened violence against the DA leaders if they set foot near President Zuma’s compound, Police yesterday stopped Ms Zille and her team just 700 metres away from their adversaries.
In her statement yesterday, Ms Zille accused ANC leaders of amplifying the threats of violence against her and the DA “with inflammatory and race-loaded rhetoric” rather than condemn them. “We will not be intimidated from exercising our constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight and focus public attention on the facts. And we will not allow the ANC to declare certain areas ‘no-go zones’ in our country,” she charged.
South African President Jacob Zuma marries his fiancee Bongi Ngema (R) at
a traditional ceremony known as "Umgcagco" at his home in Nkandla, in South
Africa's KwaZulu Natal province (REUTERS)
Jacob Zuma faces losing £1.2 million support for four wives
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/9344916/Jacob-Zuma-faces-losing-1.2-million-support-for-four-wives.html
Jacob Zuma, South Africa's polygamous president, faces losing £1.2 million budgetary support for his four wives after ANC members said taxpayers should only have to pay for one.
5:22PM BST 20 Jun 2012
Mr Zuma, 70, and his family currently benefit from a spousal support
allowance that is almost double that of his predecessors. His wives take turns
to travel with him and otherwise divide their time between individual, luxury
thatched huts in his rural homestead and homes in South
Africa's cities. But amid growing anger about the ANC's failure to narrow a gaping wealth divide between rich and poor, members of the president's own party have suggested that he should be paying more for his lifestyle choice.
Activists gathering for a provincial meeting in the Eastern Cape have backed a proposal, for just the first of Mr Zuma's wives to be supported by the state, to be put to the party's national policy conference in Johannesburg next week.
"As taxpayers, we cannot afford to continue financing so many wives," a member of the party's economic transformation committee told East London's Daily Dispatch newspaper. "Only wife number one should get benefits from the state. Our understanding is that when you decide to have more than one wife, you are able to support the others. Then deal with it."
Mr Zuma has been married six times and has four current wives and an estimated 20 children.
His latest marriage, in April this year, was to Gloria Bongekile Ngema in a traditional ceremony in his home village of Nkandla. The union once again stirred up debate about the Zulu president's polygamy.
The presidential budget for "spousal support" was £1.2m in 2009/10, almost double the cost during Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe's terms in office.
Mac Maharaj, Mr Zuma's spokesman, has insisted that it was "grossly incorrect" to suggest that taxpayers paid for the upkeep of his wives.
"The spouses pay their own living or household expenses, be it food, mortgages, lights, water and so forth," he said.
A parliamentary answer in 2010 revealed that the budget is spent on personal staff for the wives, including a secretary and researcher, phones, laptops and printers, domestic air travel and accommodation on non-presidential business and international travel and expenses on presidential business.
It is understood that the president's wives are entitled to medical aid and security, and that his children's domestic travel is funded by the presidential office.
Sixth time’s the charm: Polygamist South African president Jacob Zuma beams with delight as he marries Gloria Ngema (while his other three wives look on)
By Stewart MacleanPUBLISHED:| UPDATED:
South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has wed his fourth wife in a traditional ceremony at his rural home, his office confirmed.
The polygamist premier, 70, married Gloria 'Bongi' Ngema in a customary service which started at around 6am yesterday.
The Zulu statesman's nuptials leave Mr Zuma with four current wives and brings his total number of marriages to six.
In a statement Mr Zuma's spokesman Mac Maharaj said: 'President Jacob Zuma has today married Ms Bongi Ngema at a traditional ceremony known as umgcagco at his home in Nkandla.
'The bride and groom later participated in the traditional competitive celebratory dance.
'A wedding reception will be held this evening and tomorrow there will be the umabo, where the bride showers the groom's family with gifts.'
Number five: Mr Zuma and another of his wives, Thobeka Madiba Zuma, meet
the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh during a visit to Buckingham Palace
in 2010
Mr Zuma's wedding is the latest in a string of marriages for the former freedom fighter, who was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa's African National Congress.
The president now leads the ruling party and is the country's first polygamous premier.
He is permitted to take multiple wives under South Africa's constitution, which was was drawn up following the end of apartheid and designed to protect the traditions of the country's diverse tribes.
Mr Zuma's latest nuptials follow a prolonged engagement to Ms Ngema, a devoutly religious business graduate who has worked for companies including IBM and Deloitte & Touche and has often been seen at her new husband's side.
The couple's marriage means she will now officially join the presidential household in his home village of Nkandla, where she will live alongside the statesman's three other wives.
Mr Zuma, a former goatherd who spent a decade in prison under the apartheid regime, wed his long-standing first wife Sizakele Khumalo, 69, in 1973.
He married Nompumelelo Ntuli, 37, in 2008 and wed third current wife Thobeka Madiba, 39, in 2010.
The six-times married statesman has also had two aborted unions.
He divorced South African cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in 1999 and another wife, Kate Mantasho-Zuma, committed suicide in 2000. The president's then trio of wives were all at his side as he was inaugurated in May 2009.
Today the presidency said Ms Ngema had been part of the 'office machinery' even before the couple's wedding.
Mr Maharaj added: 'The new Mrs Zuma had already been part of the spousal machinery in terms of administrative support so there will be no changes due to the wedding.'
Last week South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper reported that the president's Nkandla home had been renovated under a multi-million-pound building project which saw the construction of six double-story thatched huts.
The publication claimed that each of the separate buildings was connected to Mr Zuma's own house by an underground tunnel, allowing him easy access to his spouses.
The statesman will share the sprawling homestead property with his wives, who also travel between his official residences in Cape Town and the capital Pretoria.
Polygamous Jacob Zuma marries for sixth time
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/9217798/Polygamous-Jacob-Zuma-marries-for-sixth-time.html
South Africa's polygamous President Jacob Zuma married his fourth current wife on Friday, the sixth time the 70-year-old has tied the knot.
9:20PM BST 20 Apr 2012
"President Jacob Zuma has today, 20 April 2012, married Ms Bongi Ngema
at a traditional ceremony known as umgcagco at his home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal,"
his office said in a statement. "A wedding reception will be held this evening, and tomorrow there will be the umabo, where the bride showers the groom's family with gifts."
"The new Mrs Zuma had already been part of the spousal office machinery in terms of administrative support so there will be no changes due to the wedding," said the statement.
The wedding is Zuma's third in just over four years and the second since coming to power in 2009 as the country's first president with multiple wives, something that is legal under liberal post-apartheid laws.
In all, he has married six times. One of his wives has died, and another – home affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma – divorced him.
Source: AFP
A woman in Nkandla, South Africa, walked near the private home of the country's president, Jacob Zuma.
South Africa’s Zuma, Tested by Mining Crisis, Faces Scandal Close to Home
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: October 23, 2012
NKANDLA, South Africa — On a pair of hilltops in this rolling, verdant corner of Zululand, two traditional family compounds owned by septuagenarian patriarchs square off. On one lies the tidy spread of a resolutely middle class family, the Sitholes: eight slightly lumpy hand-built structures, a vegetable patch and pens for cows, goats and chickens, the fruit of four decades of hard work and frugal living.Across the valley, a homestead of an entirely different magnitude has mushroomed. It includes dozens of smooth, contractor-built dwellings, a helicopter landing pad, a tennis court and a soccer field. A sports stadium and some underground bunkers are in the works, according to news reports. Glassy, newly paved roads lead to it, and the taupe walls of its neatly thatched rondavels are spotless despite the bucolic setting.
This compound belongs to the
most powerful man in the country, President Jacob Zuma, and is now the
subject of multiple probes over how $27 million of government money came to be
spent on upgrades to his private home, ostensibly for security. Tens of
millions more dollars have been spent on roads around the compound and the
village.
“He hasn’t built anything
for us,” said the matriarch of the Sithole compound, Phindile Sithole, casting
a glare at Mr. Zuma’s spread across the valley. “He has only built for
himself.”
The scandal over
improvements to Mr. Zuma’s private home could not have come at a worse time for
the beleaguered president. South
Africa is facing perhaps its most serious
crisis since the end of apartheid, as wildcat strikes roil the gold and
platinum mining industries. Just on this week, Gold
Fields, one of world’s largest gold producers, fired 8,500 workers who had
refused to stop striking, and the government was forced to cut back on its
economic forecast because of labor unrest.
Miners have been demanding
sharp pay increases, and the unrest is emblematic of the gulf between South Africa’s
richest and poorest citizens, a gap that has only widened since the end of
apartheid. A deep perception has taken hold, rightly or not, that the leaders
of the struggle against apartheid now at the helm of the governing African National Congress
have cashed in, enriching themselves and leaving the poor behind.
Indeed, the A.N.C. is
celebrating its centenary this year, but to many South Africans the venerable
organization’s commemorative slogan — “100 Years of Selfless Struggle” — seems
more like a punch line to a cruel joke. On Facebook and Twitter, photographs of
an expensive sports car emblazoned with the slogan have made the rounds. Mr.
Zuma is also fending off challenges to his leadership within his own party as
potential rivals vie to derail his plans for a second term.
Mr. Zuma, who turned 70 this
year, came from a poor rural Zulu family. He left school at a young age and
devoted his life to the fight against apartheid. He joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of
the Nation, the armed wing of the A.N.C., and served a decade in prison on Robben Island
alongside struggle stalwarts like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. But like
many top leaders of the A.N.C. since the end of apartheid, he has come to live
an opulent life despite never having held a highly lucrative job.
Construction at Jacob Zuma's home in his birthplace of Nkandla, South Africa, in October.
Mr. Zuma has said family
members paid for most of the construction of his compound here. But questions
about his personal finances have swirled for years; a bevy of corruption
charges against him were dropped in 2009 amid allegations of prosecutorial
misconduct.
Speaking to a business
group, Mr. Zuma said that his family, not the government, had built his
homestead, and that he had no idea what kind of security upgrades were being
done or what they might cost.
“I think the ministers have
given the answers and if people want to pursue that, they’ll pursue it,” Mr.
Zuma was quoted as saying by the South African Press Association. “I would not
want to comment or judge because these matters are handled by the ministers and
the auditor general. They know how the budgets are done, I can’t make myself an
expert on those ones.”
The Department of Public
Works, which is carrying out the upgrades, released a statement saying that the
work was strictly related to Mr. Zuma’s security as head of state and that the
government had “taken special care to allocate expenses to private and public
entities, as appropriate.” The agency did not release a dollar amount, but
local news outlets have cited government documents showing that the upgrades
cost $27 million, a figure the government has not disputed publicly.
Grandiose palaces were once
common for African leaders, a habit they picked up from the colonizing kings of
Europe. Mobutu Sese-Seko had opulent mansions
dotted across Zaire, as Congo was then known, and was said to insist
that the runways built next to each one be long enough to accommodate the
Concorde, should he wish to charter the supersonic jet for a quick shopping
trip to Paris or Brussels.
Félix Houphouët-Boigny,
whose velvet-gloved iron fist ruled over Ivory
Coast from its independence until his death three decades
later, built a basilica larger
than Saint Peter’s in Rome
amid the dense jungle of his hometown as a tribute to his pious mother.
But South Africa, which cast off white
rule less than two decades ago, was supposed to be different, and for the most
part it has been. To be sure, its presidents have enjoyed the perquisites of
power, but within limits.
Nelson Mandela, the
country’s first post-apartheid president, has the refined and occasionally
opulent tastes of a nobleman, which he is, being part of the royal family of
his Xhosa clan. After being released from prison in 1990, he did not return to
his modest home in the black township
of Soweto, instead choosing to settle
in Houghton, a wealthy white suburb of Johannesburg.
But the sprawling compound in his Eastern Cape village, Qunu, where he now spends most of his time, is tiny compared with Mr. Zuma’s spread in Nkandla. Mr. Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, has a fondness for Savile Row suits and fine scotch, but he lives in a large though not especially opulent home in Johannesburg.
Some of Mr. Zuma’s
neighbors say that he has earned the right to live in luxury, and that they are
proud of the success of a son of the soil.
Willow Dayena, a
27-year-old 9th grade dropout who earns about $200 a month as a driver, said
that Mr. Zuma’s achievements made him a role model for the young and
unlettered.
“I went further than him in school,” he said, referring to Mr. Zuma’s limited schooling. “Maybe one day I can be president.”
He said Mr. Zuma had made
major improvements to life here, but was fuzzy on the details.
“He brought electricity,”
Mr. Dayena said. “And toilets.”
A few moments later he
scratched his head.
“Actually I am not sure,”
he said. “I think Mbeki brought us the toilets.”
Mukelwa Hlatshwayo contributed reporting.
A commission of inquiry has been hearing testimony from police officials, mining companies, union leaders and witnesses to try to determine what happened on Aug. 16, when the police opened fire on platinum miners engaged in a wildcat strike for higher wages in Marikana, 80 miles northwest of Johannesburg.
Scene of South African Mine Shooting May Have Been Altered, Inquiry Is Told
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: November 6, 2012
JOHANNESBURG — Photo and video evidence presented to a commission investigating the police shooting that left 34 striking miners dead strongly suggests that weapons were placed next to the bodies of dead miners, in an attempt to make it appear that the police had no choice but to fire on them, according to lawyers representing the families of the victims.A commission of inquiry has been hearing testimony from police officials, mining companies, union leaders and witnesses to try to determine what happened on Aug. 16, when the police opened fire on platinum miners engaged in a wildcat strike for higher wages in Marikana, 80 miles northwest of Johannesburg.
The killings, so reminiscent of apartheid-era shootings of protesters,
set off widespread outrage and copycat strikes at other mines among workers angry at the persistent poverty and inequality that have come to characterize post-apartheid South
Africa.
There is little doubt that at least some of
the miners at Marikana had been violent. Ten people, including two security
guards and two police officers, had already been killed by the miners during
the course of the strike before the police shooting took place.
Then, in a detailed multimedia briefing the
day after the shooting, police officials argued that the miners, many of them
brandishing traditional weapons like clubs, spears and machetes, had refused to
turn back when fired upon with rubber bullets and other nonlethal weapons.
“The militant group stormed toward the police
firing shots and wielding dangerous weapons,” the police commissioner, Riah
Phiyega, said at the time, arguing that officers were left
with no option but to open fire with live ammunition.
But investigations by local
journalists — and now testimony and documentary evidence at the commission,
lawyers contend — have suggested a far more sinister portrait of the events
that unfolded that afternoon.
On Monday, gruesome images
of the dead were shown as relatives looked on, sometimes in tears. One
photograph showed the crumpled, bloody body of a miner next to a hunk of rock.
In a police video taken during the day, nothing lies next to his outstretched
right hand. But in a photograph taken in the dark, which lawyers say is from
was taken later the same day, a machete with a yellow handle lies next to the
man’s hand.
“The evidence clearly showed there is at least
a strong prima facie case that there has been an attempt to defeat the ends of
justice,” George Bizos, the anti-apartheid lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela
against treason charges that sent him to Robben Island for 27 years, told the
inquiry, the Sapa news agency reported.
In one of the videos, police
officers can be heard joking and laughing next to the bodies of the slain
miners. Two dead miners were photographed in handcuffs. Another body was found
to have 12 bullet injuries.
The testimony also revealed
the horrific violence that preceded the police shooting. A police official
presented photographs two security guards who had been hacked to death by a mob
of striking workers seeking to march on the headquarters of a rival union.
One’s face was hacked, and his tongue cut out. The other’s body was burned so
badly as to be unrecognizable.
The commission, which is led by a retired justice of South Africa’s
Supreme Court of Appeal, has been hearing evidence since Oct. 1 and is expected to finish its work within four months of its
creation.
