Mkhwebane responds to being Daily Maverick’s ‘saboteur of the year’

Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has responded to a Daily Maverick round-up of its 2019 ‘People of the Year’ which sees the publication’s associate editor Ferial Haffajee bestow on her the inauspicious title of South Africa’s “saboteur-in-chief”.

“Dear [Ferial Haffajee and Daily Maverick], it is very saddening that your publication has resorted to insults and character assassination,” wrote the public protector on Twitter.

She then added a critique of modern journalism as a whole.

“Perhaps this is what ‘new’ journalism has become as you should be the voice in highlighting issues society faces and assist in finding solutions,” her tweet concluded.

She then added in a separate tweet:

“I am immune to your insults and endured them since I assumed office, you at least have to respect your profession and readers at large. I do not blame many people who are no longer take the media serious anymore [sic].”

READ MORE: Mkhwebane: ‘There is a threat to remove me from office under the pretext that I am incompetent’

Mkhwebane also said in the second tweet that “the article by De Wet did not portray the lies you have published”, a reference to Haffajee’s quoting a profile on Mkhwebane written by journalist Philip De Wet in 2016, which notes that during her time as an immigration officer in China, her name was translated as “Meng Xi”, something Haffajee mentions before writing that Mkhwebane has “engaged in sword fights” throughout 2019 like a character from the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Haffajee also writes in the piece that Mkhwebane won her role as public protector “after exhaustive interviews in Parliament, but also because she was nominated from the Presidency of the then-incumbent Jacob Zuma – her ticket to support from the ANC caucus at parliament”.

The article brings up allegations that surfaced earlier in December, when a News24 and amaBhungane report detailed how a whistleblower claims that Mkhwebane’s order that the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) should be nationalised was actually written by the State Security Agency (SSA), which would raise questions about the public protector’s relationship with the agency.

Haffajee writes that “Mkhwebane is now clearly aligned to a faction of ANC politics and to the patronage network arranged around Zuma” and brings up how she tried to alter the Constitution so that the SARB would no longer be independent.

The article goes on to detail the public protector’s current legal battles and looks critically at her record in 2019, with Haffajee saying Mkhwebane “has issued breathtaking reports accusing Cabinet ministers, the president and others in language so intemperate that she has earned opprobrium from judges”.

Haffajee has not yet responded to Mkhwebane’s tweets directed at her, accusing her of “lies”, “insults” and “character assassination”.

(Compiled by Daniel Friedman)

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