Axing Mkhwebane
Busisiwe Mkhwebane: enemy of the state?
Growing concern, indeed alarm, at public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness for the job has led to mounting calls for her removal as head of this vital institution. But doing so may prove more complicated than it seems, especially given that the majority party is a house divided and the president is himself a target of what seems to be a rogue protector’s office
01 August 2019 - 05:00
Dishonest conduct which falls short of the standard required; a flawed model of investigation; a willingness to put forward a number of "falsehoods"; acting in "bad faith". These are just a few of the choice phrases used by the Constitutional Court last month to describe public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s probe into the apartheid-era loan made by the SA Reserve Bank to Bankorp (now part of Absa).
That was Mkhwebane’s first major decision as public protector and it stunned the country, precisely because she made an order she never had the power to make: directing parliament to change the constitution to alter the Reserve Bank’s mandate. The Constitutional Court gave it short shrift.
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