Last year, the Democratic Alliance asked Madonsela to investigate whether Zuma's family improperly benefited from the upgrade to his home. (Madelene Cronje, M&G)
Public protector Thuli Madonsela questioned the delay by the government in changing the law dealing with who she should hand reports to when a matter concerned the presidency.
"If we take the state now as a big organisation … one of the rules [that needs to be followed] is certainty and consistency. If things happen in an organisation, we have to know who has to act now," she told delegates at the Black Management Forum conference in Midrand on Wednesday.
She said earlier in the week that her preliminary report into President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla homestead was "virtually finalised", but she did not know who to hand it to.
"We are sitting here in a situation where, from our side, we know where the rest of the report has to go to, but we have a situation, when it is the chairperson of the board [for example], where does the report go?" she asked on Wednesday.
She said she advised the government about the problem three years ago, and asked it to change the law.
"The question is how long does it take our organisations to design policies to address problems we have noticed?" she asked.
Unusual challenges
"If there is a problem, it is important to immediately create a policy to solve it and then once you have a policy, to make sure that policy is followed."
She said that previously when it came to investigating members of the executive, the report was normally given to the president, but now it was tricky as the report was about him.
Madonsela previously said she encountered "unusual challenges" while compiling the report into the upgrade of the homestead.
"The Nkandla report…. Yes, I don't want to talk about some of the journey, challenges that we faced with that one. I think people will see in the report what are some of the issues that arose as we went through it, but yes, it has had unusual challenges," she told the SABC on Monday.
Last year, the Democratic Alliance asked Madonsela to investigate whether Zuma's family improperly benefited from the upgrade to his home.
Shortly before this, Zuma told Parliament that the government was paying to upgrade the security at his home, but that he had taken out a bond to pay for the rest of the upgrade. – Sapa