{"id":28566,"date":"2016-09-13T01:12:04","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T01:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-africa-president-jacob-zuma-pays-sh50m-bill\/"},"modified":"2016-09-13T01:11:51","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T01:11:51","slug":"south-africa-president-jacob-zuma-pays-sh50m-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-africa-president-jacob-zuma-pays-sh50m-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa President Jacob Zuma pays Sh50m bill over house scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{South African President Jacob Zuma has paid back $542,000 of public money spent refurbishing his private home, his office said Monday, in a controversy that has dominated his second term in office.}<\/p>\n<p>The country&#8217;s highest court found earlier this year that Zuma had violated the constitution by defying an order to repay some of the funds used to renovate Nkandla, his traditional homestead.<\/p>\n<p>It ordered him to pay back funds spent on non-security upgrades \u2014 including a chicken coop, swimming pool and amphitheatre \u2014 valued by the treasury at 7,814,155 million rand ($542,000).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;President Zuma has paid over the amount&#8230; to the South African Reserve Bank as ordered by the Constitutional Court of South Africa,&#8221; the presidency said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>It added that the president raised the money through a home loan.<\/p>\n<p>The treasury confirmed separately that the payment had been received.<\/p>\n<p>The Nkandla scandal has dogged Zuma&#8217;s presidency, becoming a symbol of alleged corruption and greed within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party and triggering several unsuccessful impeachment bids by the opposition.<\/p>\n<p>A 2014 report by the public ombudswoman, Thuli Madonsela, found that Zuma and his family had &#8220;unduly benefited&#8221; from the upgrade work \u2014 valued in 2014 at 216 million rand (then $24 million) \u2014 and ordered him to pay back some of the money.<\/p>\n<p>The president reacted by ordering two government investigations that cleared his name, including a report by the police minister which concluded that the swimming pool was a fire-fighting precaution.<\/p>\n<p>In March, the Constitutional Court ruled Zuma had &#8220;failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution as the supreme law of the land&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The ANC suffered historic losses in South Africa&#8217;s local elections last month, garnering less than 54 percent of ballots cast \u2014 an eight-point drop from the last local poll in 2011 and its worst showing since the fall of white-minority rule in 1994.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-14944 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/nkandlahome.jpg\" alt=\"A general view of South African President Jacob Zuma\u2019s private Nkandla home. \" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{South African President Jacob Zuma has paid back $542,000 of public money spent refurbishing his private home, his office said Monday, in a controversy that has dominated his second term in office.} The country&#8217;s highest court found earlier this year that Zuma had violated the constitution by defying an order to repay some of the [&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":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","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":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","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":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28566","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=28566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28566"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28566"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}