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With her world seemingly collapsing, public protector Busiswe Mkhwebane, described as a “swinging wrecking ball,” has ignored the storm of perjury looming around her and instead focused on a celebration.
His office said yesterday that Mkhwebane would lead the celebrations for the office’s first clean audit in its 25-year history today.
Oupa Segalwe, the spokesman for Public Protector, said that with Mkhwebane at the helm, the office also completed 95% of its case load within established response times.
But experts and activists said Mkhwebane had done her office more harm than good and should have been fired in July after she was found to be dishonest in her investigation into the apartheid-era loan from the Reserve Bank of South Africa to Bankorp. .
Accountability Now director Paul Hoffman, who filed the original charge that resulted in the dishonesty finding, said he wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa to suspend Mkhwebane pending the outcome of his perjury case.
“She has been a wrecking ball in that office… and what happens is that too often her findings are reviewed.
“Every time this kind of thing happens, it costs the taxpayer more money. Although you are occasionally required to pay a percentage out of pocket, generally it is you and I who pay, ”Hoffman said.
He said that when the sentence was rendered, Accountability Now wrote to the Hawks to charge Mkhwebane with perjury, which carries a minimum sentence of one year and the maximum sentence of between five and 10 years per charge, depending on judicial discretion.
Hoffman said they also asked the Council on Legal Practice to remove her from the list of advocates and parliamentarians, to begin the process of removal from office.
“No one had done anything until last week when the Hawks pounced. When we found out that she had been summoned, we wrote again to [Ramaphosa] asking for his suspension, ”he said.
Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the South African Council for the Advancement of the Constitution, agreed that Mkhwebane should have been removed after the initial decision.
She said that while they were comforted by the decision to prosecute her, it was puzzling why it had taken so long as it was clear from the trial that she had lied under oath.
“She should have been removed a long time ago,” Naidoo said.
According to the charge sheet, on the first count “Mkhwebane testified under oath that he only had one meeting with then-President Jacob Zuma, although this was false,” the charge sheet says.
The second charge relates to Mkhwebane’s statement that he had a second meeting with Zuma to clarify his response to the interim report, “knowing that the stated purpose was not correct.”
On the third charge, the charge sheet states that in a June 2018 affidavit, Mkhwebane allegedly “stated that he did not discuss the final report / new corrective action with the president on June 7, 2017, knowing it was not true” .
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