Parliament has described Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s order that the Reserve Bank’s mandate be changed as unconstitutional and encroaching on its exclusive domain. Mkhwebane made the order in her report on the Absa-Bankorp saga. “The enactment of national legislation is within the exclusive constitutional domain of Parliament. The public protector does not have the power to prescribe to Parliament how to exercise its legislative powers,” speaker Baleka Mbete said. The cards are increasingly being stacked against Mkhwebane, with the Reserve Bank, Absa, the Treasury and now Parliament all filing high court applications to have the remedial action directing a change in the Bank’s constitutional mandate set aside. The Treasury has gone a step further, approaching the court to have Mkhwebane’s entire report set aside, including her finding that the Special Investigating Unit should recover R1.125bn from Absa for an illegal apartheid-era loan extended to Bankorp, which Absa bough...
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