Former ANC president Jacob Zuma says he is available for election as ANC national chairperson at the party's December conference.

In a statement released shortly before midnight on Monday, Zuma also threw his weight behind his former wife and current ANC NEC member Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (NDZ) as his preferred person to contest again for the governing party's top position.

Dlamini-Zuma lost a close contest to incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa at the December 2017 Nasrec conference and recently confirmed she would like another shot at it. 

Zuma believes she “remains the most capable to lead the ANC”, citing her track record in the party, the many positions she has occupied in the government since 1994 and her “leadership capabilities and her understanding and knowledge of the ANC among others”.

Zuma said those opposed to NDZ's candidature for ANC president have “dismally failed” to present a better candidate but instead have thrown around names of “those who have a lot of money”. 

If branches nominate him, Zuma announced, he will heed the call and stand to return to the ANC top six, which he has not served in for the past five years.

In the race to chair ANC NEC meetings, Zuma joins incumbent Gwede Mantashe, ANC Limpopo provincial chairperson Stan Mathabatha as well as SA Communist Party deputy general secretary David Masondo. 

Mathabatha has been given the nod from the PECs of his home province and Gauteng while Mantashe got the thumbs-up from the PEC of his home province, the Eastern Cape, with Masondo getting nominations directly from branches.

Owing to the ANC step-aside rule and electoral committee regulations, Zuma, who has been charged with corruption among other charges and is standing trial, is not eligible to stand for a leadership position.

Zuma also “challenged” the call for old leaders like himself to sit back and allow a younger cohort to take the baton of leading the ANC.

In his view, the younger generation of leaders within the party are not going to get a free pass simply because of age when some of them who have been given an opportunity to lead have nothing but disastrous results to show for it.

He took a veiled swipe at ex-ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial chairperson Sihle Zikalala and former provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli for presiding over an ANC that was bruised badly during the 2021 local government elections.

Zuma said he believed more in a “generational mix” than “generational takeover”.

With the ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee yet to pronounce on their preferred national officials come December, an exercise expected to happen this week, it remains to be seen if Zuma raising his hand for national chairperson will find favour or not. 

Last month, the freshly elected provincial officials of the ANC visited Zuma as his KwaDakwadunuse homestead in Nkandla.  By Mawande AmaShabalala, Times Live

The state department for petroleum irregularly spent millions of shillings set aside to train Kenyans on petroleum operations.

The performance audit for the period ending October 2021 by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has showed.

It said the department had Sh944 million set aside for training but the money was spent on other items.

The report said only 14 of the 61 courses offered for training were appropriate.

“Revenue from Training Fund was spent on non-training items leading to a decline on expenditure on training over the years,” Gathungu said.

Section 11 (4) of the Petroleum Act 2012 states that all monies from the Training Fund shall be used only for purposes for which the kitty was created; training Kenyans on petroleum operations.

In the report, Gathungu said the state department for petroleum used part of the monies from fund to procure specialised equipment and offer grants to the National Oil Corporation of Kenya.

“The insufficient and irregular utilisation of the Training Fund was attributed to the fact that the department had not developed regulations on utilisation of the kitty,” she said.

The Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act 2012 established a Training Fund that requires contractors to pay an agreed amount per contract year, being payment for training fees, to the fund.

The report said an analytical review of documents provided for audit revealed arrears in training fees amounted to $6.7 million (about Sh700 million).

The production sharing contract provides for termination of a contact if the contractor fails to make any payment to the government for a period exceeding one month.

“However, despite some companies having arrears dating back to four years, the state department for petroleum had not terminated any of the contracts for non-payment of training fees,” Gathungu said.

She added that the department did not have a defined procedure for collection of training fees.

“Non-payment of training fees denies the government revenue, which can be used to build local capacity in the oil and gas sector,” Gathungu said.

The report said receipts into the Training Fund amounted to Sh2.6 billion while expenditure was Sh1.48 billion, giving a utilisation rate of 56 per cent.

Petroleum exploration in Kenya dates back to the 1950s. However, interest in the sector increased significantly after the discovery of commercially viable quantities of oil in 2012.

The audit assessed the measures put in place by the department to manage the implementation of local employment and training provisions as outlined in the Production Sharing Contracts.

It sought to establish the extent which Kenyans are benefitting from local employment and the Training Fund.

Clause 13(1) of the Production Sharing Contract require the contractors to give preference to employment and training of Kenyan nationals.

“It is the responsibility of the state department for petroleum to supervise the implementation of Clause 13(1) to ensure international oil companies only hire expatriates for skills not locally available,” the report said.

It however said a document review revealed that some jobs taken up by expatriates were for skills that were locally available.

“For example, Tullow Oil (Kenya) B.V requested for work permits for expatriates in areas such as supply chain management, security advisor and environmental health and safety. These positions could have been filled with locally available skills,” the report stated.

The department was also cited for insufficient collection of training fees from international oil companies. - ALLAN KISIA (Edited by Bilha Makokha), The Star