There are very few South Africans who do not know how a complaint handled by Busisiwe Mkhwebane, the person who occupies the office of the public protector, will pan out.
If it involves anyone from the so-called Jacob Zuma faction of the ANC, it will be dismissed and the culprit will walk. If it involves anyone who has spoken out against state capture it will be pursued with zeal and they will be found to be in violation of the laws or the constitution of the land.
Knowing how Mkhwebane operates does not help President Cyril Ramaphosa or his supporters. Everything she has done emanates from and carries the authority of the office of the public protector, and this is why the Ramaphosa presidency is in jeopardy. The decisions of that office carry grave consequences.
And so, whether Ramaphosa agrees with Mkhwebane’s finding that he deliberately misled the National Assembly when he was asked about a donation made to his ANC election campaign by Bosasa doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter whether he agrees that he was in breach of the provisions of the executive ethics code and the constitution. These findings are binding and have a tight timeline within which they have to be remedied.
That’s our law.
That means that Ramaphosa’s detractors within the ANC, as well as those outside the ANC, such as Julius Malema and Mosiuoa Lekota, now have a stick of dynamite and a timer in their hands.
Do not be in any doubt. This public protector has no credibility. In May the high court in Pretoria reviewed and set aside her 2018 report on the Vrede dairy farm where Zuma supporters and friends allegedly stole more than R200m of poor farmers’ money and gave it to the Gupta family and others.
The high court said her report was "unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid". The court also found that Mkhwebane had failed in her duties and violated the Public Protector Act and the constitution.
The corrupt have been given their biggest weapon against the president. They will use it with a vengeance
That’s not all. In 2018, the same court set aside the remedial action contained in her Absa-Bankorp report. The judge said Mkhwebane didn’t "fully understand her constitutional duty to be impartial and to perform her functions without fear, favour or prejudice".
On Monday the Constitutional Court upheld that ruling, saying Mkhwebane’s investigation was "flawed" and that she was "not honest" in parts.
Yet Ramaphosa cannot be seen to be fighting or defaming the office of the public protector. In his fight against her findings, which he termed "wrong in law and irrational", he has to tread very carefully.
Ramaphosa is aware of the tightrope he is walking, given his words on Sunday: "My decision to seek a judicial review of this report should by no means be seen as a comment on the person who occupies this office, the competence or motives of the public protector. This is motivated instead by a determination that the law should be applied correctly and consistently."
He is being a diplomat. Mkhwebane should have been removed, as the DA seeks to do, as part of the cleaning up of state institutions. Ramaphosa’s ANC has not had the courage to support the DA in this.
So she sits in the office, using it as cover to play factional politics.
Mkhwebane is regarded by the Zuma faction as its tool in the fight against those who wish to clean up the state.
In her latest Bosasa findings this faction of the corrupt within the ANC has been given their biggest weapon against Ramaphosa since he ascended to power in December 2017. They will go after him with a vengeance. They will get Malema and the EFF to table a motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa in parliament. They will ensure a secret ballot is held. Then they will get rid of him.
If they succeed the consequences will be huge. The country will get a new president from the Zuma faction. We will be back in the Zuma years of theft from taxpayers, of institutions that are run for the few.
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