Madonsela to clarify her position

Johannesburg - Public Protector Thuli Madonsela will brief media on Thursday following the war of words between her and the ANC after her letter to President Jacob Zuma was leaked.

"The purpose of the briefing is for the public protector to clarify her office's understanding of the architecture of the country's constitutional democracy and explain in detail how her office deals with investigations from start to finish," her office said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The public protector will also use the platform to make a constitutional request to certain external actors that are currently involved in state affairs in relation to the work of her office."

Madonsela would address the history of interactions with organs of state, including the presidency.

The ANC of Wednesday accused Madonsela of not doing her work correctly.

Party secretary general Gwede Mantashe said she was abusing her office and trying to get media attention by saying things not in any report or being investigated anywhere.

This followed Madonsela's claim that the letter she had written to Zuma was leaked to the press by a senior ANC official.

Madonsela reportedly wrote to Zuma last week about the spending of R246m on security upgrades at his private Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal homestead.

In her letter she cautioned him he was second-guessing her recommendations that he should repay part of the money spent on features unrelated to security, such as a swimming pool, cattle kraal, amphitheatre, and visitors' centre.

In his reply to her report on Nkandla, Zuma indicated Police Minister Nathi Nhleko needed to determine if he should pay back any of the R246m.

Madonsela wrote in her letter: "I am concerned that the decision you have made regarding the police minister gives him power he does not have under law, which is to review my decision taken in pursuit of the powers of administrative scrutiny I am given... by the Constitution."

Mantashe denied the leak came from the ANC and said Madonsela's office leaked every report she wrote and blamed it on the divisions within the ANC.

He suggested that she had worked with Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters, whose MPs heckled Zuma about Nkandla in Parliament last Thursday.