By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
A Parliamentary committee heard how Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane showed “no mercy” to a “skilled” investigator who suffered a stroke.
Executive manager Ponatshego Mogaladi also testified that Mkhwebane overrode a disciplinary committee’s decision to suspend her. She said Mkhwebane decided to dismiss her, but the Labour Court overturned this.
Mkhwebane has always maintained that the classified 2014 document by former Inspector-General of Intelligence Faith Radebe — on which the suspended Public Protector based her SARS “rogue unit” report — had been mysteriously dropped off in the foyer of her offices, it was the EFF’s Floyd Shivambu who had attached it to an email complaint to the PP.
The committee for the Section 194 inquiry heard on Thursday, 25 August that Shivambu had in fact been the complainant in the matter all along and had illegally been in possession of the classified report.
Ponatshego Mogaladi said she had been concerned that Shivambu might not have top secret security clearance and should not have been in possession of the document. The EFF leader had emailed and WhatsApped Radebe’s report to her.
In January 2019, Mkhwebane had popped into the offices of then Inspector-General of Intelligence, Setlhomamaru Dintwe, desperate to get her hands on a “legal” copy of the classified Rabebe report that she used as the basis for her now notorious and discredited report into the SARS “rogue unit”.
In a recording leaked to the media, Mkhwebane can be heard saying, “I was surprised, whoever had it should not have it, it is classified. But unfortunately I have seen the report on Noseweek.”
With news that Mkhwebane had the classified report all along, it is also clear she failed to provide implicated parties with this and also left it out of her Rule 53 court record.
It is also now clear from evidence to the inquiry that the report had not been dropped off mysteriously in the foyer of the Public Protector’s offices in Pretoria.
All of this, too, was withheld in Mhhwebane’s final report.
On top of that, none of Mkhwebane, the EFF or Shivambu disclosed this to the Pretoria High Court when then Minister of State Security, Ayanda Dlodlo, brought an interlocutory application seeking to interdict the dissemination of the 2014 report.
Mkhwebane opposed Dlodlo’s application, saying the IGI report was “a central part of her ongoing investigations and findings”.
In July 2019, Pretoria High Court Judge Sulet Potterill suspended Mkhwebane’s remedial action against Gordhan. A month later, in August 2019, Mkhwebane withdrew her Constitutional Court application for leave to appeal against that ruling.
On Thursday it was committee member Mimi Gondwe who asked Mogaladi who the original “anonymous” complainant had been in the SARS “Rogue Unit” matter.
“It was Floyd Shivambu,” she replied.
Shivambu is a Member of Parliament who swore to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.
A recap of Mkhwebane’s modus operandi in attempting to strong-arm Dintwe into releasing the classified Radebe report is worth revisiting.
Radebe had been instructed in 2014 by Jacob Zuma ally, then minister of state security David Mahlobo, to investigate media reports that several state security operatives were embedded in SARS and had launched an attack on the institution in an attempt to undermine it.
Livestream Video Below:
Video Courtesy of Parliament.