If charges stick, Busi could land up behind bars – expert

There is a lot on the line for perjury-accused Public Protector advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who could face jail time, be disbarred and axed – if the charges against her stick.

Criminal expert Dr Llewelyn Curlewis said yesterday there was a very real possibility that, if convicted, Mkhwebane could
land up behind bars.

“One would likely be looking at a shorter term for a first-time offender, though.”

He also said she could be looking at a periodic imprisonment, a suspended sentence or a fine, instead.

Any which way, though, a criminal conviction would almost certainly see Mkhwebane disbarred.

“If she had a criminal record, she would probably no longer be considered a fit and proper person to practise as an attorney,”
constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos said.

ALSO READ: Perjury case ‘beginning of the end’ for Mkhwebane as public protector, says Accountability Now

Lawson Naidoo of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution pointed out she would also almost certainly lose her job under these circumstances.

“If she were to be convicted of these criminal charges, it would clearly indicate that she was not a fit and proper person to hold office, either,” he said.

The criminal case against Mkhwebane is still at a relatively early stage.

She made her first appearance in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, when the case was postponed to March.

Mkhwebane’s lawyer, advocate Dali Mpofu, told the court that in the interim, they would make representations to the national
director of public prosecutions for the withdrawal of the charges.

“Which we regard as frivolous and contrived,” he added.

He said if their representations were rejected, they would likely approach the high court.

The charges against Mkhwebane relate to allegations that she lied under oath about secret meetings she had with former
president Jacob Zuma, after she was taken to court over her Bankorp-CIEX report.

READ MORE: Perjury-accused Mkhwebane invokes apartheid, calls SA justice system ‘cruel’

The report was released in 2017 and in it, the public protector found the SA Reserve Bank had “illegally gifted” Bankorp, one of the country’s largest banks at the time, a R1.125 billion bailout in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Among her binding recommendations was that Absa, which had since acquired Bankorp, pay back the money.

The Reserve Bank and Absa took the report on review and in 2018, it was in the main set aside by the High Court in Pretoria.

At the heart of the case are two affidavits Mkhwebane submitted to the courts while fighting the case, in which the state claims
she lied about how often she had met the former president to discuss the Bankorp investigation and what their meetings entailed.

Paul Hoffman, who heads lobby group Accountability Now, said he believed this was “the beginning of the end” or Mkhwebane, who is also facing an investigation by the Legal Practice Council into her fitness for office and a parliamentary impeachment inquiry against her.

But her spokesman, Oupa Segwale, said she was “confident she will be cleared of any wrongdoing”.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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