Public Protector Busi Mkhwebane remains upbeat

Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane is unperturbed by her perjury case and is confident she will be cleared of any wrongdoing.“As a law-abiding citizen, the public protector will co-operate and present herself to the court on 21 January as required and is confident that the court will clear her of any wrongdoing,” her spokesperson, Oupa Segalwe, said yesterday.

Mkhwebane was on Tuesday served with a summons to appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court to face three charges of perjury in January in a case opened by advocate Paul Hoffman from Accountability Now in 2019. The case was triggered by the Constitutional Court decision which confirmed an earlier adverse ruling of the High Court in Pretoria regarding Mkhwebane’s handling of her investigation of the apartheid-era loan by the SA Reserve Bank to Bankorp.

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According to the charge sheet, in count one “Mkhwebane declared under oath that she only had one meeting with then-president Jacob Zuma though this was false”, states the charge sheet. The second count relates to Mkhwebane’s declaration that she had a second meeting with Zuma to clarify his response to the provisional report, “while knowing that the purpose declared was not correct”.

About the third count, the charge sheet states that in an affidavit dated June 2018, Mkhwebane allegedly “declared that she did not discuss the final report/new remedial action with the president on June 7, 2017, while knowing that it was not true.”

Segalwe said the case was opened on the strength of a split Constitutional Court decision, in which the majority judgment confirmed an earlier adverse ruling of the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria in respect of the public protector’s South African Reserve Bank-CIEX investigation report.

He said in the dissenting judgement, however, no adverse findings were made against the public protector in respect of the alleged false statements contained in her affidavits. Segalwe said the Constitutional Court concluded: “It cannot, therefore, be a consequence of a correct and fair assessment of the public protector’s version to conclude that she only disclosed the meeting of April 2017, but concealed or was totally secretive about the fact of the one of June 2017 taking place.

“Doing so could reasonably be misunderstood as being symptomatic of a desperation to find fault.”He said Mkhwebane had learned through media reports that Accountability Now director Hoffman, who laid the original charge which resulted in the perjury charges, has asked President Cyril Ramaphosa to suspend her.

Segalwe said it was not the first time Hoffman sought to “nail” Mkhwebane. The public protector views these as being characteristic of [Hoffman],” said Segalwe.

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