Mkhwebane loses ConCourt bid to appeal Vrede dairy farm judgment

Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has been dealt another blow in court, this time as the Constitutional Court on Friday dismissed her application for leave to appeal the judgment against her on the Estina Dairy Farm report.

The ConCourt ruled that the application bears no reasonable prospect of success, and dismissed the application with costs.

Mkhwebane had earlier tried to appeal the judgment against her handed down on May 20 last year, in which Judge Ronel Tolmay ruled in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria that Mkhwebane had failed the people of South Africa in the way she dealt with the investigation.

The project saw millions of rands which were meant for developing a dairy project in the Free State being paid into the accounts of Gupta associates. The money was alleged to have helped foot the bill for a lavish Gupta wedding at Sun City.

Mkhwebane’s report was taken on review by the Democratic Alliance and the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC).

ALSO READ: Supreme court denies Mkhwebane leave to appeal Vrede Dairy Farm matter

In December, the North Gauteng High Court denied Mkhwebane leave to appeal the scathing Estina dairy farm judgment against her.

She then petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal for leave to appeal the judgment, but this was also dismissed. After that, Mkhwebane turned to the Constitutional Court, where her application was likewise dismissed on Friday.

ALSO READ: How Mkhwebane ‘failed the poor’, and will soon be bankrupt herself at this rate

Judge Tolmay in delivering judgment at the time declared that the public protector had failed to fulfil her constitutional duties, that her “dereliction of duty” in the Estina matter was “more lamentable” than in her report on ABSA/Bankorp and the Reserve Bank, which was also overturned with costs, and that she had “turned a blind eye to South Africa’s most poor and vulnerable”.

DA MPL in the Free State Dr Roy Jankielsohn earlier said that in her initial judgment, Tolmay indicated that the public protector contravened the Public Protector Act and the Constitution, “the very instruments that should have been used to investigate, expose, and remediate the bureaucratic and political malfeasance in the Vrede Dairy Project”.

“It is for this reason that Judge Tolmay declared that the [public protector] report regarding the Vrede Dairy Project is ‘set aside and declared unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid’,” Jankielsohn said.

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