BackTwo decades after the fall of apartheid, the nation’s first female public protector tries to beat back corruption at the highest levels of government.
[…] Madonsela’s office falls somewhere between a government watchdog and a public prosecutor. It is one of the so-called Chapter Nine institutions that were established in the post-apartheid 1996 Constitution to help safeguard South Africa’s fledgling democracy. Most of the reports the office releases concern low-level government corruption; this one contained the results of Madonsela’s 18-month investigation into President Jacob Zuma.
The report found that three months after Zuma was first elected in May 2009, he used state funds to renovate his private residence, just south of the rural town Nkandla in the Zulu homeland of KwaZulu-Natal. He claimed that he needed to improve his security system. A few months after work began in August 2009, The Mail and Guardian, another South African newspaper, reported that the upgrades included a helipad, a clinic and at least three new houses for the president’s personal employees — and that the total cost had swelled to more than $5 million. The government maintained that only security enhancements were being made to Zuma’s homestead at taxpayer expense; Zuma told Parliament that he had paid for the extra improvements himself. But by the end of 2012, several South African citizens and a former opposition leader had filed complaints with the office of the public protector, asking that Madonsela look into Zuma’s use of state money. […]
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Source: The New York Times Magazine
