Ramaphosa questions Mkhwebane’s motives

In his affidavit, the president says protector accessed ‘stolen’ private and confidential e-mails

President Cyril Ramaphosa has for the first time openly questioned public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s political motives for the way she had conducted her investigation and had come to politically explosive findings that have linked him to potential money laundering.

He says the public protector was motivated by an “ulterior purpose” in her inclusion of details of his ANC election bank accounts. These were irrelevant to her investigation into whether he misled parliament about a R500,000 donation from facilities firm Bosasa, he said.

While Ramaphosa has previously expressed concern about Mkhwebane’s grasp of the law, he has refrained from entering into debate about her motivations. The public protector, whose credibility has been damaged by her losing court challenges in key cases, has faced accusations that she was involving her office in factional fights in the ANC. She vehemently denies being biased.

Her relentless pursuit of Ramaphosa and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, has been a major distraction for the president. The possibility that it might eventually lead to him being ousted has worried investors who are counting on Ramaphosa to push through growth-boosting reforms in an economy that is barely growing and is burdened by a 29% unemployment rate.

In his affidavit filed as part of his court bid to overturn Mkhwebane’s report on his “CR17” campaign, Ramaphosa accuses Mkhwebane of accessing “stolen” private and confidential e-mails linked to the campaign. He narrowly defeated Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for the ANC presidency in December 2017, before taking over the leadership of the country in February 2018.

“It is my belief that these

e-mails were stolen from the CR17 campaign computers. I call on the public protector to explain how and from whom she received these e-mails.”

After receiving the so-called “Rule 53” record of documents and evidence that Mkhwebane used to make her findings that the CR17 campaign may have been complicit in moneylaundering, Ramaphosa argued that the probe was done without any legal basis and was not conducted “in good faith”.

All “the evidence obtained by the public protector relating to the CR17 campaign is entirely irrelevant to her investigation, findings and remedial action and should never have been included in the ‘Rule 53’ record.”

While Ramaphosa does not identify the purpose behind Mkhwebane’s report, the much publicised disclosure of his funders’ identities through media leaks has left him politically vulnerable. He is accused of having been “captured” by those who supported his campaign – many of whom are prominent business people. In an ANC divided along pro- and antibusiness lines, the disclosures have given ammunition to his opponents.

Ramaphosa says not one of Mkhwebane’s findings — that he lied to parliament about the donation from recently deceased Bosasa CEO Gavin Watson, which exposed him to the risk of conflict of interest and that suspicions of money laundering linked to his “improper relationship” with Bosasa were substantiated — was “supported by the evidence in the record”.

He says Mkhwebane has produced no evidence to show that he deliberately lied to parliament when he initially claimed that Watson’s donation was a payment from Bosasa, now trading as African Global Operations, to his son Andile, with whom the company had a consultancy agreement.

“Yet the public protector came to the astonishing and unjustified conclusion that I deliberately misled parliament,” Ramaphosa says.

Mkhwebane is expected to file a reply to these accusations in the coming weeks.

2017 the year Cyril Ramaphosa defeated Nkosazana DlaminiZuma for the ANC presidency