Ghosts of Nkandla could put buyers off Zuma homestead
● Your own firepool to plunge into on a summer’s day, immaculate paving that won’t catch your Christian Louboutin heels and a world-famous chicken coop are just some of the selling points of SA’s best-known rural estate.
But would you really get a good night’s sleep in former president Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla house?
That’s the marketing dilemma facing an estate agent if Zuma loses the 8.6ha property to VBS Mutual Bank’s liquidators for defaulting on his R7.8m loan.
A property auctioneer who asked to remain anonymous said one of the downsides of buying the estate — which has three large free-standing houses, an amphitheatre, visitors centre, security village and its own spaza shop — would be a possible backlash from Zuma’s supporters.
“I can’t imagine the community bringing ‘welcome to the area’ pies and house-warming gifts to the new owners. I can imagine protests and the owners being the target of angry protesters,” he said.
A group of professional property valuers who also did not want to be named said political and security risks could be off-putting. “In theory, a notional buyer would be the rising middle class who work in major cities but still have their homesteads in and around the area, a B&B operator or anybody wanting to turn it into a museum,” the group said.
But would Nkandla work as a guesthouse?
The valuers said such an option could work because the property is 40km from a number of game farms frequented by foreign tourists. But for such visitors, the Nkandla property might not be of sufficient interest to lure them away from the game farms themselves. They might also prefer “mainstream establishments” with lower security risks.
The valuers do not see Zuma’s estate being attractive to buyers. “We cannot see any positive selling points that will be attractive to the open market, or economically palatable,” they said.
Zuma leased the land in February 2011 from the Ingonyama Trust, which is cited as a respondent in VBS’s court application.
Depending on the lease agreement, anyone who buys the property might only have occupation for the rest of the lease period, which expires in 2051. Thereafter the property, and any buildings on it, will revert to the trust unless it agrees to extend the lease.
Ingonyama Trust spokesperson Jerome Ngwenya did not respond to requests for comment.