Transport Minister S’bu Ndebele’s R1-million Mercedes Benz gift made headlines around the country this week.
Ndebele was given the vehicle, along with fuel vouchers and two head of cattle, last weekend by Vukuzakhe contractors, who have been granted multibillion-rand government tenders over the past 10 years. Opposition parties, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and political analysts denounced the gifts as a conflict of interest, but Ndebele disagreed.
However, on Tuesday Ndebele decided to return the luxury vehicle and the cattle, though President Jacob Zuma and the African National Congress (ANC) leadership had advised him he could keep the car.
The Mail & Guardian Online on Wednesday looked at how some of the country’s newspapers covered the story.
In Business Day‘s Tuesday edition, the paper ran a page three story on experts’ opinions about whether it was appropriate for Ndebele to accept the gifts. The Institute for Democracy in South Africa’s (Idasa) Judith February and Democratic Alliance (DA) transport spokesperson Stuart Farrow said it was a conflict of interest because Vukuzakhe was involved in the transport sector. February also said Zuma should persuade the minister to return the gifts to set a good precedent for his administration.
In its Opinion & Analysis section, the paper ran a tongue-in-cheek piece about Ndebele’s predicament of whether to keep the Benz or not. It urged Zuma to discourage Ndebele from keeping the Mercedes S500, saying: ”Those contractors shouldn’t even give him a bicycle!”
The front pages of Sowetan‘s Tuesday and Wednesday editions were dedicated to Ndebele’s Merc.
In its Tuesday edition, reporters interviewed the South African Communist Party (SACP), Cosatu and the DA, who all called on the minister to return the gifts as a matter of principle.
On Wednesday, the paper reported on Ndebele’s press conference, where he announced that he had decided to ”voluntarily” return the vehicle although Zuma and the ANC leadership had advised him to keep it as long as he declared it in Parliament’s Register of Members’ Interests.
Ndebele has been applauded for returning the lavish S-Class Mercedes, but it’s ”just a pity that it took three days, 12 front page headlines and 15 bleating opposition politicians to get the point across”, said the editor of The Times, Ray Hartley.
The Times front-page article suggests that the handing back of the gift by the minister is merely an effort to clear his ”good name” rather than an ethical decision. Ndebele said that former president Nelson Mandela had accepted luxury gifts from Mercedes Benz and BMW during his tenure as president.
S’thembiso Msomi’s comment piece in the same publication agrees with this position. He says: ”But I am still concerned by Ndebele’s insistence that there was nothing wrong with the ‘gift’ since Vukuzakhe, as he said, had been under the ‘impression that I was retiring from politics’. This makes one wonder if the minister will be open to accepting another Mercedes or cattle when his term of office expires.”
The Star‘s front-page article suggests that although the transport minister returned the gift he was still rather reluctant. ”I am not compelled to return it. My authority here will be the code of ethics of MPs and members of the Cabinet, and what the president and the office bearers say, and they say there is nothing wrong with it,” he said.
Ndebele was presented with the car on Sunday in Pietermaritzburg at a party held in his honour. It was hosted by contractors who had benefited from roads-related contracts under KwaZulu-Natal’s ”Vukuzakhe” government programme.
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