Seven opposition parties vowed to step up a campaign to drive President Jacob Zuma from office

 

Cape Town - Seven opposition parties on Wednesday vowed to step up a campaign to drive President Jacob Zuma from office after the ANC adopted a report that clears him of responsibility for misspending on his Nkandla homestead.
DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane said minority party MPs would call for Zuma's removal during the debate on the Nkandla report in the National Assembly on Thursday afternoon because by defying the public protector's findings, he had violated the Constitution.

Calling the impasse on Nkandla a "crisis", Maimane told a media briefing they would launch a court bid to force the president to reimburse the state for the refurbishment of his home in rural KwaZulu-Natal.
"I think we have a case in law," he said.
"Until such time as Jacob Zuma accounts for the massive undue benefit he received personally at Nkandla, the threat of legal action against him will remain front and centre in our programme of action."
He then quipped: "I think the hashtag must be #Zumamustgo."
The report adopted by an ad hoc committee of Parliament made up entirely of ANC MPs after the opposition withdrew, relied heavily on a recent Western Cape High Court judgment to reject Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's findings that Zuma had been enriched and must repay the state for a portion of the R246m project.
Madonsela plans to challenge Judge Ashton Schippers's ruling that her orders of remedial action are not binding though they could not be ignored without rational grounds.
Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota said once the Constitutional Court had heard the review, the opposition coalition would go to court to force Zuma to comply with her findings.
"Clearly the Constitutional Court will give priority to that... Whatever flows from that outcome will enable us to take our matter forward."
Zuma failed to reply to Madonsela report
Maimane added that the ANC's reasoning was spurious and said the party could not get away with relying on the Schippers judgment because Zuma had failed to engage with Madonsela's report, memorably writing in a submission to Parliament that he refused to comment on it.
His colleagues from the EFF, AgangSA, the FF Plus, the United Democratic Front, and the African Christian Democratic Party one by one expressed disgust with the Nkandla project and Zuma's handling of it.
"It can't be right whether you are in the ANC or in another political party, it can't be right that President Jacob Zuma's cows live in a kraal that is actually 10 times more than the price of an RDP house, or maybe more. It is wrong," said UDM MP Nqabayomzi Kwankwa.
"I don't mind if he does it at his own expense, but it is at our expense, the taxpayer's expense."
He said politicians had a duty to their voters to protect state resources from abuse, and, therefore, the opposition would press Zuma to return to Parliament to answer questions on Nkandla.
The president has not addressed the National Assembly since he was heckled over Nkandla by the EFF on 21 August. When opposition parties raised this point last week, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa scolded them for being disrespectful to Zuma.
Kwankwa said: "We have a crisis here where the president refuses to come to Parliament to answer questions because it has gotten to the point where he feels that his ego is actually more important than the Constitution of the country."