Respect is a two-way street, Mr President

The good news is that President Jacob Zuma has finally broken his silence about an accusation that he lied to parliament.

For two frustrating days, the president and his office had kept us in the dark by not responding to a City Press charge that an angry Zuma had misled the National Assembly when he told MPs that he had a mortgage on his Nkandla residence.

It is a serious accusation, one that, if proved true, would lead to a head of state's sacking in many other democracies.

Zuma's silence on the matter on Sunday and Monday left even some of his sympathisers wondering if he had such little respect for the constitution and the institutions created by it that he believed he could mislead parliament and get away with it.

Had the ANC's electoral dominance made him so arrogant that he thought it beneath him to explain himself to the public on such a serious matter?

It was, therefore, a great relief to finally get a response from presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj yesterday.

"We reaffirm that President Zuma does indeed have a bond on the residence with one of the national banks and he is still paying it off monthly," Maharaj said.

The bad news is that Maharaj's statement provided no further details.

Without impugning the president's honesty and integrity, it would have been preferable for Zuma to have named the "national bank".

There has been too much controversy and confusion about the upgrading at Kwadakwadunuse, the president's private residence, for him to expect that a three-line statement by Maharaj would be enough to satisfy an increasingly sceptical public.

Unless further details about the home loan are revealed, the matter is likely to drag on for a long time, in the process further tarnishing the image of the highest office in the land.

Maharaj said late yesterday that evidence of the mortgage bond would be made "readily available" only to "an authorised agency or institution empowered" by the law.

"It is not being released to the media to respect the privacy of the president as well as customer-institution confidentiality," Maharaj said.

In parliament on Thursday, when Zuma first stated that he was still paying off a mortgage bond on the residence, it became clear that the president feels deeply hurt by the public controversy surrounding his rural home.

"On TV, they showed the house that I paid for. And they lie that it has been built by government. It has not been built by government," he said.

"I have an opportunity today to explain this because my name is being used wrongly. My family is being undermined. Even by honourable members [of parliament] who don't ask . what actually happened. And I feel very aggrieved, I must tell you for the first time.

"I have been convicted, painted black, called the first-class corruption man on facts that are not tested. I take exception," a visibly upset Zuma told parliamentarians.

But if the media and opposition parties have been generally unfair in their treatment of the Nkandla saga, the president is not an innocent victim.

Zuma and his office should shoulder some of the blame for failing to respond promptly to issues raised in the public domain about the Nkandla upgrading.

Much of the speculation about the cost of the project, as well as about how much of it would be paid for by the public, could have been avoided if the government - especially the president's office - had been more forthcoming with information.

Instead, they have tended to be very defensive, regarding every question - no matter where it came from - as an attack on Zuma.

This approach naturally leads to suspicions that the government has something to hide.

To avoid negative speculation and conjecture, Zuma and his office have to be more transparent.

Yes, it was right to allow the public protector and the auditor-general to investigate the allegations about the costs of the upgrading.

And Maharaj is right to call on the public to be patient while the investigation into the security improvements to Zuma's home continues.

But that does not take away the president's responsibility to account promptly to the nation whenever fresh questions arise.

Instead of Zuma and some of his comrades in the ANC endlessly bemoaning the "disrespect" for his office shown by the media and opposition parties, it is high time they considered how their own approach to communications contributes to this.