Leave God out of it, Busisiwe

Well, that’s a relief. After her social media outpourings recently, we now know that Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane is not helping the Jacob Zuma faction in their fight-back against ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa.

She’s on a mission from God. On Twitter on Friday evening, Mkhwebane said she had been placed in her position by God and that “only He can remove me if He is of the view that I have failed”.

Whether she will one day be proclaimed the patron saint of state capture remains to be seen, but for now it appears to have escaped her notice that her appointment was anything but heavenly, in more ways than one. She was appointed by parliament and can only be removed by parliament, which is, in turn, accountable to that very public mentioned in Mkhwebane’s job title.

No effort at martyrdom is going to change that. In many respects, her tactics and timing, when it comes to the release of reports which will embarrass Ramaphosa, are uncannily similar to those employed by the “fight-back” faction.

This past week we saw ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule raising the issue of the independence of the SA Reserve Bank as a red herring to distract from the attention his own alleged connection with wrongdoing is attracting.

Mkhwebane’s latest attempt to flame Ramaphosa – after announcing last week she is still after Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan – was her finding that the president had “inadvertently misled” parliament about R500 000 paid to his son Andile by the controversial Bosasa group. Interestingly, her report was “leaked” to journalists unsympathetic to Ramaphosa.

No doubt the “fight-back” faction will seize upon the latest report as fresh ammunition in the fight against Ramaphosa. And their motto, based on performance, might well be “let us prey”

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.