PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has dismissed the suggestion that he should testify at the inquiry into Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office.
This comes after UDM leader Bantu Holomisa asked whether it would not be fair for the committee to invite Ramaphosa to make sure that everything was above board because they were not going to succeed if they asked Mkhwebane and grilled her alone.
In a statement, the Presidency said Ramaphosa did not make any allegations against Mkhwebane.
“The President cannot be compelled to provide evidence proving or disproving these accusations,” Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said.
Magwenya also said Ramaphosa had decided to suspend Mkhwebane from the office on June 9 and the Constitution provided him with power to suspend the incumbent “at any time after the start of proceedings by a committee of the National Assembly for (their) removal”.
“Accordingly, President Ramaphosa rejects the suggestion by the Hon. General Bantu Holomisa that he should give evidence on his 2017 party political campaign during the section 194 inquiry,” he said.
Magwenya said Holomisa’s speculation that the CR17 campaign “may have” used public funds was baseless, misdirected and vindictive.
“It is an abuse of parliamentary processes and privilege. It has never been alleged that public funds were used by the CR17 campaign.”
Magwenya said the Constitutional Court judgement last year ruled that Mkhwebane had no authority to investigate the CR17 campaign because it was not an organ of state and not within the public protector’s remit.
He charged that the Constitutional Court remains the final arbiter of justice and its judgments should be accepted and respected.
“Parliament does not have the mandate to review Constitutional Court judgments in the separation of powers of the executive, legislative and the judiciary. The section 194 inquiry into Advocate Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office is not a platform to make unsubstantiated allegations that fall outside of the scope of inquiry,” Magwenya added.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary inquiry heard on Wednesday that the issue of Mkhwebane not having access to her work email account was being looked into.
Evidence leader Nazreen Bawa said she had taken up the matter with acting Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka after Mkhwebane’s legal representative Dali Mpofu raised the matter since Monday.
The inquiry heard that Mkhwebane’s account was blocked since she was suspended last month, and was only restored last Thursday.
Bawa said she had communicated with Gcaleka and was provided with two letters she wrote to Mkhwebane.
In one letter, Gcaleka told her principal that they had tightened communication protocol to ensure staff disclosed documents, information and any material only via official channels.
“To this end I would like to invite you to engage my office on any requests in relation to any of the services that may be affected by your suspension as well as any information, material and documents that you may require for the purpose of your preparations,” she wrote in her June letter.
In another July letter, Gcaleka said she was advised necessary steps had been taken to ensure that Mkhwebane had access to email account to enable her to retrieve any historical email that she required.
Bawa said Gcaleka had indicated that she would make sure that if Mkhwebane still had no access to the email, the IT unit would make direct contact with her.
Mpofu said: “Last Friday we thought it had been restored because actually we did gain access as I mentioned yesterday, but it was taken away.”
Bawa asked Mpofu to communicate with her office if the email issue was resolved timeously.
“We will liaise. We are indebted to the assistance because it is quite an urgent issue,” Mpofu said.
