Public Protector’s Vrede Dairy Report is a whitewash of corruption

The DA notes the release this morning of the Public Protector’s report into the corruption in the Vrede Dairy Farm project. Our legal team have been tasked to consider the report and I will provide further details during my briefing on the outcomes of Federal Council on Sunday.

However, it is frankly mind boggling how it could be that after an almost four year investigation into the Vrede Dairy Project, Public Protector Adv. Busisiwe Mkhwebane found only that the Free State Department of Agriculture contravened the prescripts of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).

The Public Protector also failed to send a copy of the report to the DA as the original complainant, as per past practice.

There has been a large amount of evidence of grand corruption and money laundering relating to Vrede that is already in the public domain. Yet none of this seems to have been investigated by the Public Protector.  When I took the intended beneficiaries to meet with the Public Protector in December last year, she promised to act in good faith and to conduct a comprehensive investigation.

It is therefore unconscionable that her report is nothing more than a whitewash of a grand project of corruption and looting.

Neither the people of Vrede or the Free State are any closer to seeing justice for being robbed of R220 million to line the pockets of the Guptas.

The Public Protector chose to ignore our submission that the project originated in the Office of the Premier of the Free State, Ace Mageshule, and made no mention of the involvement of the Guptas and how they benefitted from this project. This stinks of a complete whitewash.

Similarly, the remedial action recommended in the report proposes to discipline the implicated officials but she makes no recommendations whatsoever on the action to be taken against the political principals who orchestrated this evil project – Mosebenzi Zwane and Ace Magashule.

We will be studying this inadequate whitewash of a report in detail.

For the DA, this matter does not end here. We have and will always stand with ordinary people who continue to be let down by the state.

The intended beneficiaries of the Vrede Dairy Project deserve nothing less than full political accountability and swift criminal prosecutions of the corrupt thieves behind this project.

The Public Protector’s report does not come close to offering this.

Public Protector's Vrede Dairy Report is a whitewash of corruption

The DA notes the release this morning of the Public Protector’s report into the corruption in the Vrede Dairy Farm project. Our legal team have been tasked to consider the report and I will provide further details during my briefing on the outcomes of Federal Council on Sunday.
However, it is frankly mind boggling how it could be that after an almost four year investigation into the Vrede Dairy Project, Public Protector Adv. Busisiwe Mkhwebane found only that the Free State Department of Agriculture contravened the prescripts of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).
The Public Protector also failed to send a copy of the report to the DA as the original complainant, as per past practice.
There has been a large amount of evidence of grand corruption and money laundering relating to Vrede that is already in the public domain. Yet none of this seems to have been investigated by the Public Protector.  When I took the intended beneficiaries to meet with the Public Protector in December last year, she promised to act in good faith and to conduct a comprehensive investigation.
It is therefore unconscionable that her report is nothing more than a whitewash of a grand project of corruption and looting.
Neither the people of Vrede or the Free State are any closer to seeing justice for being robbed of R220 million to line the pockets of the Guptas.
The Public Protector chose to ignore our submission that the project originated in the Office of the Premier of the Free State, Ace Mageshule, and made no mention of the involvement of the Guptas and how they benefitted from this project. This stinks of a complete whitewash.
Similarly, the remedial action recommended in the report proposes to discipline the implicated officials but she makes no recommendations whatsoever on the action to be taken against the political principals who orchestrated this evil project – Mosebenzi Zwane and Ace Magashule.
We will be studying this inadequate whitewash of a report in detail.
For the DA, this matter does not end here. We have and will always stand with ordinary people who continue to be let down by the state.
The intended beneficiaries of the Vrede Dairy Project deserve nothing less than full political accountability and swift criminal prosecutions of the corrupt thieves behind this project.
The Public Protector’s report does not come close to offering this.

Zuma must release terms of reference for State Capture Inquiry by tomorrow

The DA has written to President Jacob Zuma to demand that he release the terms of reference for the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

The establishment of the Judicial Commission is so far beyond overdue it is astounding. If the President had respected the Constitutional mandate of the Public Protector, the report on the findings of the Judicial Inquiry should have been finalised by June last year, a full seven months ago.

It has also been almost a week since Zuma announced that the Commission would finally be established but nothing can proceed until the terms of reference have been clarified and released.

The allegations of State Capture have already undermined the public’s faith in the state. And, as the President himself noted, any further delays in establishing the Commission, “will make the public doubt government’s determination to dismantle all forms of corruption”.

In an interview on the weekend, ANC President, Cyril Ramaphosa, stated that he believed the terms of reference should conform to what is already set out in the former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela’s, State of Capture Report which is very clear on the scope. It does not contemplate that the Commission of Inquiry would stray beyond these grounds.

It is time the ANC demonstrates their commitment to stamping out corruption, which has become rife under its watch. Failure to do so only confirms that the ANC under Ramaphosa will be the same as the ANC under Zuma.

The current Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, appears to be intent on sowing confusion by contradicting her predecessor’s findings and obfuscating the true purpose of the Commission by calling for its scope to be widened – apparently at Zuma’s direction.

Mkhwebane’s proposal is neither practical nor in the interests of justice as it might result in the Commission sitting for years and being unable to complete its work because of an overly broad mandate.

In our correspondence with the President, the DA reminded him that any attempt to water down the scope of the Commission would be unlawful and undermine the powers of the Public Protector as per the Constitution.

The Commission must get to work urgently and probe the serious allegations of State Capture lodged against President Zuma, his son, Duduzane, and the controversial Gupta brothers. The ongoing discussion about the Terms of Reference for the inquiry and Zuma’s repeated attempts to have the report reviewed have been nothing but delaying tactics. The reality is that the Terms of Reference are already established by the Report, which must now simply be implemented.

Clearly defining the Terms of Reference will be in the best interests of all South Africans and must be done urgently so that we can address ongoing State Capture once and for all, and hold those responsible to account. The country has a right to know what specifically will be probed – Zuma can no longer hide.

Public Protector can no longer ignore request for Set-Top Box probe

The Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, can no longer ignore the DA’s request for a probe into the procurement process of the government-sponsored set-top-boxes (STB) – a key component of the broadcast digital migration (BDM) process.
The DA has written to the Public Protector once again to request that she proceeds with the investigation without further delay as it seems the BDM process is marred by irregularity and corruption, which needs to be urgently investigated.
The DA’s initial request to the Public Protector, acknowledged on 8 August 2017, was for her office to:

  • Probe the procurement process for the government- subsidised STBs;
  • Investigate alleged tender irregularities and possible unlawful decision-making;
  • Determine whether the entire BDM process needs to be cancelled and re-run; and
  • Recommend disciplinary action or actions by SAPS or other investigatory bodies to further probe the process and pursue possible criminal acts.

Yet, three months later and there seems to be little to no progress.
This past week, the GuptaLeaks revealed how Tony Gupta acted as a channel between MultiChoice – a key protagonist in the STB encryption battle – and former Minister of Communications, Faith Muthambi, to change the BDM policy in MultiChoice’s favour, which she did.
Today it has come to light that the Hawks raided 13 of the 26 firms involved in the STB tender, following a 10-month investigation by the Competition Commission into collusion in the process.
These revelations, in conjunction with the Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) investigation into the process clearly indicate serious procurement irregularities or criminal acts had been committed and must been acted upon.
The PWC report that was forwarded to the Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, who has administrative authority of the BDM programme while the Minister of Communications has executive authority over it, has not been acted upon because “it is a draft”.
Clearly, there’s something in the report that Minister Muthambi and Telecommunications Minister, Siyabonga Cwele, do not want the public to see.
Repeated requests to the Chairpersons of the Communications and Telecommunications and Postal Services portfolio committees to hold two-day hearings into the entire BDM process have also failed to materialise, despite being included in the committee programmes of each term this year.
In August 2017 USAASA applied to the North Gauteng High Court for a declarator order to declare the tender process unlawful and to set aside the purchase orders as there were irregularities – and possibly criminal acts – in the awarding of the tenders. The matter is still to be heard.
The DA remains resolute, and we will not be deterred by the obvious tactics to sweep the irregularities and corruption in the BDM process under the rug.

Mkhwebane wastes taxpayers’ money once again

The DA condemns Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s, late withdrawal of her application to postpone proceedings in the court case in which her report on the ABSA/CIEX bail-out is being challenged.
She did offer to pay punitive costs but this is easy to do when you are spending other people’s money and therefore, she has yet again wasted public resources.
The fact is that she should not have launched such an application, which was clearly frivolous.
This is not the first time Mkhwebane has wasted taxpayers’ money in this fashion. Since her appointment, she’s wastefully incurred legal costs including:

  • In July 2017, when she withdrew her opposition to an urgent application to set aside her remedial action amending the Constitution; and
  • In February 2017, when she opposed President Jacob Zuma’s review application “merely to comply with the court rules” while still seeking a legal opinion – she only decided to commit to opposing the application in June.

It seems Mkhwebane has taken a leaf from Zuma’s book in launching court applications and withdrawing them later and sees nothing wrong with this.
Mkhwebane holds a critical position and the legal games she has been playing since her appointment are unacceptable. By all accounts, she is falling very short of fulfilling her mandate as Public Protector. The DA has long held that she is not suitable for the post and she continues to illustrate this, this time by wasting taxpayers’ money.

DA demands access to Audit Committee report on Secretary to Parliament

The Democratic Alliance has written to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, demanding that the Audit Committee report detailing the investigation into suspended Secretary to Parliament, Gengezi Mgidlana, be made available to members of the Joint Standing Committee on the Financial Management of Parliament.
In May 2017, I submitted documents to the Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, to assist her investigation into the serious allegations of maladministration and abuse of power levelled against Mgidlana. These documents revealed how Mgidlana had, amongst others, irregularly used a state vehicle fitted with blue lights; had parliamentary staff chauffeur his wife; and conducted overseas trips, with his spouse, amounting to nearly R2 million.
While Mgidlana has been on “special leave” since 9 June 2017 and was in November formally placed on precautionary suspension pending the finalization of disciplinary proceedings against him, the Audit Committee report has not yet been made public. Despite this, on Thursday 16 November 2019, it emerged that the Standing Committee co-chair, Vincent Smith, had received a copy of the report.
There is a clear, legal duty to provide the report to the members of the Standing Committee. Section 49 of the Financial Management of Parliament Act (10 of 2009) is explicit on this matter – it states:
“If the audit committee becomes aware of information implicating the Accounting Officer in fraud, corruption or gross negligence, it must report this promptly to the Executive Authority and the oversight mechanism.”
The fact that only one member received the report is inappropriate and fatally irregular as it undermines well-established parliamentary procedure on handling documents considered confidential.
In my letter to the Speaker, I have demanded that each of the members of the Standing Committee immediately be provided with a copy of the report on condition that it be treated as confidential.
Mgidlana has been allowed to mismanage Parliament for far too long – we look forward to studying the findings of the Audit Committee report and taking decisive action.

Public Protector agrees to meet DA on a number of pressing issues

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is pleased that the Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, has acceded to a request for a formal meeting to discuss a number of pressing matters linked to her office, and the performance of her constitutional mandate to investigate misconduct by government departments and entities and to protect the public’s interest. The meeting has been set down for Monday, 13 November 2017.
DA Leader, Mmusi Maimane, will be raising the followings matters, among others:

  • Why she has not yet released the report into the Vrede Dairy Farm, which has been sitting on her desk for almost six months.
  • Whether she has ever met with any members of the Gupta family, in any capacity whatsoever, and if so, what circumstances necessitated such a meeting;
  • The latest developments with regards to the new “preliminary investigation” into State Capture, which was announced on 15 June 2017. The investigation aims to determine the merits of several allegations of corruption and unlawful enrichment emanating from the infamous “Gupta Leaks”;
  • The progress on a number of ongoing investigations following complaints by the DA over the past 12 months. These include the following:

o   Investigation into Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister, Des Van Rooyen, for allegedly misleading Parliament and the public regarding his visit to the Gupta’s family home in Saxonwold;
o   Investigation into former acting Eskom CEO, Mr Matshela Koko, for allegedly awarding a R1 billion contract to his step-daughter while at Eskom;
o   Investigation into the R30 million pension payout to former Eskom CEO Brain Molefe, allegedly authorised by Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown;
o   Investigation into Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown, for allegedly misleading Parliament when she failed to disclose if there had been any contracts of engagement between Eskom and Gupta-linked company Trillian Capital Partners;
o   Investigation into former Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba and the naturalisation of, and issuing of visas to, members of the Gupta family;
o   Investigation into Police Minister, Fikile Mbalula, and former Acting National Police Commissioner Kgomotso Phahlane for the misuse of state resources in providing VIP protection to Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma; and
o   Investigation into the alleged breach of the Ethics Code and the Power, Privileges and Immunities Act by Mineral Resources Minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, for willfully misleading Parliament by failing to disclose his personal interests pertaining to the Guptas;
o   Clarity regarding the allegation that she concealed submissions received from Black First Land First about her investigation into the apartheid-era bailout of Bankorp by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB); and
o   What her plan of action is regarding those who are actually pulling the strings when it comes to State Capture – including President Zuma, several of his cabinet ministers, and the Gupta family. To date, the real architects and technicians of State Capture have escaped unscathed, while board members, senior executives, and government officials have been used as scapegoats.
We look forward to engaging the Public Protector on the above matters and trust that she will make available all necessary information.
The role of the Public Protector is integral to the proper functioning of our democracy, and now more than ever, we desperately need a Public Protector who is wholly committed to fighting for the people of South Africa – by tackling State Capture and corruption in all its forms.
 

Our success in the Free State begins with good leadership

The following speech was delivered today by DA Leader, Mmusi Maimane, at the party’s Free State Provincial Congress.
Delegates, Members, activists, staff,
Good morning, Molweni, Goeiemôre, Bagaetso.
It is great to be here in the Free State Province this morning, a province at the very heart of our nation – both geographically and politically.
Not too far from here, at Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Manguang, the ANC was formed some 105 years ago. And today, 105 years on, the ANC is all but dead. And this is no more apparent in this province as it is anywhere else in the country.
The Free State Province represents a systemic failure of governance. The province has the highest unemployment rate in the country, unprecedented levels of poverty, and is a captured state run by the Guptas and their lackey, Ace Magashule.
It was here that the ANC was founded, and it is here where it is finished
Fellow Democrats, it is now up to us to usher in a new beginning.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am told our new Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, wants to take the DA to court for calling her a spy. It has taken her exactly a year to come to this decision. We welcome any opportunity to speak about her background and her ability to perform her job.
But we have other legal business with the Public Protector that predates this decision of hers by many months. We are still awaiting her report on the Estina Dairy Farm in Vrede, which was due more than six months ago.
In March this year, she stood in the Free State Legislature and told us that the investigation was complete and that the report would be released in April. Of course April came and went, and she promised us a new deadline. In July we were again told it would be out within days. It is now almost November.
I have it on good authority that the report has been lying on the desk of the Public Protector for months. It is also highly suspicious that all communication on this matter between her office and the DA in the Free State ended the moment the Gupta email leaks story broke which connected the Vrede farm money with the Gupta wedding. I can only assume this hard evidence has set the cat among the proverbial pigeons in her report.
The victims of this crime – the 80 farmers from the local community who were meant to benefit from the project but have been left stranded – cannot wait any longer for justice. And so I will be writing to the Public Protector on Monday to demand the release of the report within seven days, failing which we will seek a declarator from the court compelling her to do so.
I will also give the Chair of SCOPA, Themba Godi, one more opportunity to schedule a public hearing for the victims of this crime. If he again refuses, I will bring them to Parliament myself so that they can tell their story to the committee and demand answers.
Corruption is not a victimless crime. These are real people whose dreams have been crushed and whose lives have been put on hold, all because the friends of Zuma and Magashule saw a chance to steal more money. They will not get away with it.
Fellow Democrats,
If you were still in any doubt about the gravity of our country’s situation, then Wednesday’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement by the captured Minister Gigaba would have cleared that up. On our current trajectory we are heading for disaster, and our project to bring change cannot come a moment too soon.
Instead of reassuring us that our economy can be saved through fiscal discipline, strong action on our failing SOEs and an unambiguous rejection of the nuclear plan, Minister Gigaba left us with the message that he simply has no plan.
The numbers he gave us confirm what we already knew – that our country is headed for bankruptcy under this ANC government. He confirmed that our tax collection shortfall has rocketed to over R50bn. He confirmed that our gross national debt will shoot up to 60% of GDP by 2020. And by 2019, when President Zuma leaves office, our cost of servicing this debt will be three times what it was when he became president.
Minister Gigaba could only offer us unsustainable stop-gap measures to temporarily stave off disaster. But by dipping into our contingency funds and by selling off shares in our only viable state-owned enterprise to prop up failures like SAA, he is just speeding up the collapse. He is acting like someone who pawns his appliances to feed a harmful lifestyle.
That is why our task has just become so much more urgent. No one else is going provide an alternative. No one else – not inside the ANC or anywhere else – is going to steer our country away from the edge. It will fall to us with the help of our coalition partners. We are the bulwark against a complete economic and social collapse.
I don’t mean to alarm you more than you already are, but I cannot stress enough the importance of everything we do over the next 18 months. And that includes your business here today when you elect new provincial leadership. These decisions could have a major impact on our electoral performance, and you cannot afford to compromise at all.
If anyone has an idea of the dire path our country is on, it is you here in the Free State. Because this province, under the awful leadership of Ace Magashule, has become a scaled-down version of the Zuma administration. Same corrupt captors in the Guptas, same method of looting the state, same complete financial mismanagement and same seemingly untouchable Big Men at the helm.
We’ve known this all along, though. We knew, from the beginning, that Magashule and his then sidekick, Mosebenzi Zwane, were Gupta men through and through. We knew that the Vrede Dairy Project was nothing but a cash machine for this government and their Gupta friends. And all of this has now been confirmed in the hundreds of thousands of Gupta emails leaked to the media, including the Gupta links with Magashule’s son.
The result of this runaway corruption can be seen in every single aspect of government delivery here in this province. No department has escaped the damage.
Free State Health has all but collapsed, and doctors are leaving the province in droves. Free State Education has an R800 million overdraught. The province has a backlog of unregistered title deeds of over 63,000.  Collectively, Free State municipalities owe Eskom almost R5 billion.
The Free State also has the highest official unemployment rate in the country of 34.4% using the narrow definition, or 40.5% if you include those who have given up looking for work. This is a shameful statistic.
Attacks on farmers and farmworkers in the Free State are out of control, with more than 50 having occurred in the province this year alone. This echoes the crime stats released this month, which confirmed that murders have increased across all communities throughout the country. Surely it is time to reintroduce specialised rural safety units within SAPS.
This province is a time bomb, and we’re going to have to bring change very soon.
I know some people in South Africa are still holding out hope that this change will come from within the ANC. I understand how hard it must be for people who have grown up in the shadow of the party their entire life to accept the party’s demise and look elsewhere for solutions. These people cling to the hope that clearing out a few bad apples – the Zumas and the Gigabas and the Magashules – will set us back on course again.
I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. Because even if the party could find it within itself to get rid of these people, it would change neither the culture of the organisation nor its outcomes. Because no matter who you place at the head, the web of patronage and the culture of corruption has become so pervasive it infects everything they do.
While we’re all busy pouring over Minister Gigaba’s mini budget speech this week, I went and had a look at the mini budget speeches of the previous few years. And two things stand out as quite remarkable. One is that all three consecutive speeches were delivered by three different Finance Ministers. And the other is that if you cover up the names and dates, the same key message gets repeated year after year: “We did worse than we expected”.
In October 2015, Minister Nhlanhla Nene lamented that “growth is considerably lower in our economy than we projected”.
In October 2016, Minister Pravin Gordhan informed us that he’d had to again revise growth expectation for our economy “somewhat lower than the February estimates”.
And on Wednesday, Minister Gigaba told us that we’ve missed our tax collection target by R50 billion “due to lower than expected economic growth this year”.
The problem is not the personnel. The problem is the organisation. And that is why they are doomed.
My fellow Democrats,
Instead of gloating over the demise of our opponents, I want to use this as a very serious warning for our own party. Because everything that has befallen the ANC, could easily happen to us too.
The ANC’s woes come down to a “perfect storm” of issues – three major obstacles which, together, have had a calamitous effect on their party. The first is that they allowed corrupt and self-serving individuals to rise to the top of the party – Jacob Zuma, followed by the likes of Minister Gigaba.
The second is that they lost their ideological way and now find themselves adrift. No one knows if they’re nationalising or selling off assets. Should they bail out SAA or cut it loose? Will they go ahead with the nuclear build or abandon it? They have no direction.
And the third is that they allowed the organisation to die by letting a culture of patronage and crony politics dominate. This is now at such an advanced stage that it cannot be undone without completely rebuilding the party.
It’s a spectacular collapse, but if any of you think this is unique to the ruling party, then I want to wake you from this dream. The DA is not immune to this kind of organisational rot – not by a long shot. If we don’t constantly take stock of where we are, where we want to go and how we need to get there, we could easily find ourselves in the very same position.
We must guard against the very things that are tearing the ANC apart.
We must guard against politics of ego. Ours is not a party built on personality cults. Here in the DA no one is too important to get stuck in and do the ground work. We all campaign, we all go door to door, we all make ourselves visible in the community and we all contribute wherever we can. We’re 18 months away from the most important elections any of us have ever contested. We can rest afterwards.
We must guard against politics of patronage. If you have ambitions to use your position to dispense favours, jobs and contracts, then you are in the wrong party altogether. Ours is a party of service and selflessness. Our loyalty is to the people and the Constitution.
We must guard against the creep of nationalist language and ideas. No one in the DA speaks for or represents a particular racial group or culture, and we certainly don’t mobilise along these lines. Our vision of a free and open society is built on non-racialism, tolerance and embracing a diversity of ideas.
If we lose focus on any of these issues, we will be in trouble. It’s a slippery slope along which we will not easily recover.
When you cast your votes today to elect new leadership here in the Free State, I want you to remember who we are and what we stand for. And I want you to ensure that the people chosen to spearhead our project in this province are able to keep us on the right path.
I know we still have much work to do in the Free State, but we’re certainly heading in the right direction. The recent by-election results in ward 12 in Mangaung were hugely encouraging, where we grew from just 4.5% in 2016 to 18.5%. We now need to repeat this performance throughout the province, and what better place to start than next month’s municipal-wide by-election in Metsimaholo.
The budget vote debacle and subsequent dissolution of the Metsimaholo Municipality taught us some valuable lessons about coalition politics and trust. We need to ensure that we do not step into the same trap the second time round.
But more importantly, we must first run a successful by-election campaign there. Because the better we do ourselves and the less we need to rely on others, the easier it will be to continue our work for the people of Sasolburg, Deneysville, Kragbron and Oranjeville.
We have exactly one month left in which we need to reach every single one of Metsimaholo’s 79,000 voters. They need to know us, and they need to know what we will bring to government in the municipality. It will require a huge effort, but I assure you it will be worth all the blood, sweat and tears.
My fellow Democrats,
The people of the Free State need to see change here soon. And we, the DA, are that change. We must offer a complete break from the disaster that is Jacob Zuma’s ANC, and the disaster that is Ace Magashule’s ANC. And this begins with the people we choose to lead our organisation.
So cast your votes today with this in mind. And when you are done, then we will all stand behind the elected leaders and do whatever it takes to bring change to the people of the Free State.
Thank you.
 

The DA will not shy away from standing up to the Public Protector

The DA notes the statement by the Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, that she will be pursuing legal action against the party, for reportedly calling her “a spy”.
The statement comes a mere two days after the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development, at the behest of the ANC, backtracked on instituting a formal inquiry into her fitness for office.
The DA will not shy away from this, or any further legal action, to ensure that the Public Protector’s office is above politicking and not subject to the political interference that seems to have characterised her tenure.

ANC protect compromised Mkhwebane in a revisit of Nkandla mistakes

The ANC has once again chosen to use their numbers to protect the compromised Public Protector, Adv. Busisiwe Mkhwebane, at the expense of fulfilling their mandate and ultimately at the expense of all South Africans who deserve an effective and uncompromised person in the role.
The Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services had previously voted to consider the matter of Mkhwebane’s removal, but backtracked spectacularly and have now voted today to not conduct an inquiry into her fitness to hold office at all.
The DA has long maintained that Mkhwebane is unsuitable for the role and with each passing day, it becomes more and more obvious that this is true.
Parliament has failed before to properly exercise its oversight role, in the Nkandla matter. This failure was confirmed by the Constitutional Court judgement which stated that the National Assembly in that matter “flouted its obligations”, and acted in a manner that was “inconsistent with the Constitution and unlawful”.
We should learn from these mistakes, but the ANC seems doomed to do the same again, in a true illustration of their inability to self-correct.
The DA condemns this behaviour by the ANC with the contempt it deserves and will now consider all avenues possible to ensure a full review of Mkhwebane’s fitness for office as the people’s Public Protector.