{"id":26429,"date":"2016-06-28T02:23:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T02:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-africa-s-president-zuma-must-repay-500-000\/"},"modified":"2016-06-28T02:23:19","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T02:23:19","slug":"south-africa-s-president-zuma-must-repay-500-000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-africa-s-president-zuma-must-repay-500-000\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s President Zuma &#8216;must repay $500,000 in public funds&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africa&#8217;s treasury has recommended President Jacob Zuma pay back $509,000 (\u00a3385,000) to the government for upgrades made to his private home.}<\/p>\n<p>This comes after the country&#8217;s highest court ruled earlier this year that Mr Zuma repay some of the $23m of public funds spent on his house in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>The upgrades included an amphitheatre, pool, chicken run and cattle enclosure.<br \/>\nMr Zuma must now repay the money &#8211; about 3% of the total spent &#8211; within 45 days.<\/p>\n<p>An anti-corruption body, known as the public protector, ruled in 2014 that Mr Zuma had &#8220;unduly benefited&#8221; from the non-security renovations to his rural home in Nkandla in South Africa&#8217;s KwaZulu-Natal province.<\/p>\n<p>In March, the Constitutional Court then ruled that he had violated the constitution when he failed to repay some of the money.<\/p>\n<p>It gave the treasury two months to come up with a figure for Mr Zuma to repay.<br \/>\nThe treasury says it hired two independent quantity surveyors to conduct separate investigations to come up with the figure.<\/p>\n<p>The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), one of the parties which brought the case, welcomed the treasury&#8217;s report but said it had hoped the figure would be higher.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This sends out a clear message to those involved in corruption, especially those in the ANC, that you will be held accountable for your actions, even if you are the president,&#8221; the AFP news agency quotes DA spokesman Mabine Seabe as saying.<br \/>\nWhat has been a long and drawn out fight between President Zuma and opposition parties seems to be coming to an end, reports the BBC&#8217;s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>The Nkandla scandal has been a hotly debated subject in parliament for almost three years and has damaged the president&#8217;s reputation, she says.<\/p>\n<p>In April, President Zuma apologised for the controversy and said he would abide by the Constitutional Court&#8217;s ruling.<\/p>\n<p>A few days later he survived an impeachment vote in parliament, showing his opponents that he is a true political survivor, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-13097 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_88171818_zuma-composite.jpg\" alt=\"The Nkandla residence has become a political headache for President Zuma\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africa&#8217;s treasury has recommended President Jacob Zuma pay back $509,000 (\u00a3385,000) to the government for upgrades made to his private home.} This comes after the country&#8217;s highest court ruled earlier this year that Mr Zuma repay some of the $23m of public funds spent on his house in 2009. The upgrades included an amphitheatre, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26429"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26429"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}