Helen Zille to take public protector’s finding against her on review

Western Cape premier and former DA leader Helen Zille said she will take public protector advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s finding against her on review to the high court.

This comes after Mkhwebane found Zille had violated the Executive Members Act when she assisted her maths teacher son by arranging for tablets from the province’s education department to be loaned to him so he could offer extra maths lessons to disadvantaged matric students.

In a statement Zille issued following Mkhwebane’s announcement of her finding, the Western Cape premier said: “The public protector has once again, reflected her severely limited understanding of the constitution and the law, and I will, yet again, be taking her finding against me on review to the high court.”

In her statement, Zille rejects Mkhwebane’s finding that there was any conflict of interest between her role as premier, “and the fact that I supported my son, a mathematics teacher in Khayelitsha at the time, to borrow equipment of the Western Cape education department in order to run free matric preparation workshops in disadvantaged schools”.

“Insofar as there may have been a perception of a conflict of interest, I fulfilled the requirements of the law in mitigating it.

“I wish to stress that if I faced the same situation today, as I did then, in 2014, I would do exactly the same because it was the right thing to do. The director general of the province, advocate Brent Gerber, would also do the same thing again because it was entirely lawful, constitutional, and appropriate in the circumstances.”

Zille confirmed that her son had been a mathematics teacher in Khayelitsha who had prepared free matric revision programmes that he wanted to give, at no charge, during the October school holidays to disadvantaged pupils.

“He presented the revision workshop at the school where he taught and he offered the same revision courses to other schools. This offer was warmly accepted. However, at some of them, the digital platform was inadequate,” Zille said.

The premier said the inadequacy of the digital platform prompted her son to mention the matter to her, “and said he would probably have to cancel the workshops”.

“I thought it would be a pity if they did not go ahead, particularly for the learners. I mentioned this to the director-general [DG] of the province at my normal weekly meeting where I raise a range of public queries I have received.

“The DG reminded me that the Western Cape Education Department [WCED] had acquired tablets precisely for this kind of usage, in a cabinet-mandated programme, and that they were due to be delivered at the beginning of the fourth term.”

Zille said she then asked whether it would be possible to make the tablets available for the free extra maths lessons his son was offering over school holidays.

“On enquiring, the DG established that 150 had already arrived and would be available through the Western Cape education department.

“My son then contacted the WCED and arranged to borrow the tablets for the free workshops, and returned them at the end of the holiday, as agreed, in mint condition.”

Zille said this meant “everyone benefited” because there were no costs involved, reiterating that there had been no conflict of interest involved either and that “the feedback was very good”.

“The law and the Public Service Commission distinguishes between a conflict of interest (where a public interest contradicts a private interest), and a congruence of interest, where there is no conflict involved. The latter was the case in this situation.

“On the question of the risk of perception of conflict I took care to prevent this by writing a letter to the director-general, which I copied to other officials, saying that the tablets had to be made available to anyone else wanting to use them for the same purposes.

“In this way, I ensured that my son would not receive special treatment.

“I wrote: ‘I just want to make it clear, as discussed with Minister Schafer, that these tablets should be available for use by all service providers who provide free services to students in the run-up to the examinations till the end of the year (not necessarily only matrics).”

In conclusion, Zille said apart from the legal errors in Mkhwebane’s report, part of the remedial action proposed is also unlawful.

“This is another reason why I will take the report on a full review.”

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