What a waste of time, money, Mkhwebane

It has been said before but, given what emerged at the parliamentary inquiry into whether suspended public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane is fit to hold office, it does seem that the public should have been protected from her.

Her legal incompetence – underlined by myriad judgments against her – as well as her obvious partisan stance on the side of the ANC’s RET (radical economic transformation) faction orbiting Jacob Zuma, shows clearly that she is unfit for the office, which is supposed to be one of our most important civil watchdogs.

That legal incompetence, though, came at a shocking price to the taxpayer … more than R150 million was spent on legal services from a host of attorneys, advocates and law firms.

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Former EFF luminary Dali Mpofu, SC, was paid R12 million for his services. Not bad work, if you can get it, we would say… Even some of these most eminent lawyers – Mpofu foremost among them – could not, however, put lipstick on the pig of Mkhwebane’s incompetence and the majority of the cases she fought in court saw her losing.

Not only that, she was forced to pay some money in punitive costs, because clearly the courts felt she was wasting their time in some of these legal actions.

The attitude that the public purse was bottomless when it came to defending her own image was further bolstered by evidence at the parliamentary inquiry that she had paid activist Kim Heller and political analyst Professor Sipho Seepe for “communication services”.

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These were nothing less than blatant propaganda on her behalf. Yesterday, the Western Cape High Court dismissed her bid to appeal the court’s refusal to enforce the invalidation of her suspension.

Hopefully, the next step will be her formal impeachment. It won’t bring back the money she wasted, but it will be some form of justice.