{"id":203085,"date":"2016-03-31T09:15:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T09:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=203085"},"modified":"2016-03-31T09:15:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T09:15:26","slug":"jacob-zuma-ordered-to-refund-over-16-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=203085","title":{"rendered":"Jacob Zuma ordered to refund over $16 million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A constitutional court in South Africa has ordered President Jacob Zuma to repay costs of upgrading his house with public funds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Zuma will pay more than about $16 million which he used to upgrade his private residence where he added security, a swimming pool, a chicken run, a cattle enclosure, an amphitheatre, and a visitors&#8217; centre at the estate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Constitutional Court ruled that President Zuma violated the constitution when he failed to repay some of the government money used to upgrade his private home.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The treasury had 60 days to determine how much he should repay, it added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The ruling is a victory for the opposition, which said it would push for Mr Zuma&#8217;s impeachment after\u00a0accusing him of using &#8220;ill-gotten wealth&#8221; to upgrade his home.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mr Zuma denied any wrongdoing and he has not yet commented on the ruling.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_203097\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-203097\" style=\"width: 660px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-203097 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/88171818_zuma-composite.jpg\" alt=\"_88171818_zuma-composite\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-203097\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Nkandla residence has become a political headache for Mr Zuma<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An anti-corruption body, known as the public protector, ruled in 2014 that $23m (\u00a315m) had been spent on his rural home in Nkandla in South Africa&#8217;s KwaZulu-Natal province.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mr Zuma had &#8220;unduly benefited&#8221;, and should repay a portion of the money, the public protector said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In a unanimous judgement, the Constitutional Court said Mr Zuma&#8217;s failure to heed the directive was &#8220;inconsistent&#8221; with the constitution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;The president failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution of the Republic,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The case was brought by two opposition parties, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Democratic Alliance (DA).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mr Zuma&#8217;s conduct constituted &#8220;grounds for impeachment&#8221;, the DA said in its reaction to the judgement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8211;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By citifmonline.com with files from the\u00a0BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A constitutional court in South Africa has ordered President Jacob Zuma to repay costs of upgrading his house with public funds. Zuma will pay more than about $16 million which he used to upgrade his private residence where he added security, a swimming pool, a chicken run, a cattle enclosure, an amphitheatre, and a visitors&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":203086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/203086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}