Mkhwebane goes further down rabbit hole in her latest crusade

Public protector is selective with evidence, ignoring facts discrediting sources she could have googled

Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has stated that she can only be removed by God, so her primary fealty is clearly not to the constitution. Scrutiny of her latest clumsy findings against the former head of the police investigation unit suggests that Mkhwebane takes on politically sensitive cases based on faith, in the hope that evidence will follow. If it doesn’t, she finds “testimonials” that suit her.

Parts of her report on Robert McBride, released earlier this week, are so bizarre that it must bring into question not merely the competence of the person who compiled it, but their grip on reality. Her report is based on the grievances of a devious former independent police investigative directorate (Ipid) officer who is under investigation for “corruption and defeating the ends of justice”.

In her apparent crusade against those foremost in fighting corruption, she sweeps aside previous findings to impose her own interpretation of events. Notably, she reinvestigated Pravin Gordhan and the SA Revenue Service “rogue unit”, contradicting the findings of Judge Robert Nugent.

Now, once again, the public protector has resorted to “heating up stale old potatoes”. The complaints against McBride that she re-examined had already been discredited and withdrawn, but such details do not deter Mkhwebane.

Strangely, it seems I have more facts at my disposal than are evident from Mkhwebane’s report. Lately, updating a book I wrote nearly 30 years ago on McBride and his unit in Umkhonto we Sizwe, I have been immersed in documents and affidavits covering his time as executive director of Ipid, tasked with probing police abuses. What emerges is that, in taking on corrupt cops at the highest level, there has been a concerted campaign to smear him and his top investigators.

In what looks suspiciously like a vendetta, Mkhwebane may merely be the latest aggressor.

In the case of McBride, the Public Service Commission (PSC) had already dismissed the allegations Mkhwebane decided to revive. Baffled, McBride’s lawyers reminded her of rules relating to her remit: that she need not investigate “where a matter is being or was dealt with by another public body ... and an investigation by the public protector would lead to a duplication of efforts or resources.” Nevertheless she ploughed ahead, even though her complainant, faced with disciplinary action, had promptly resigned and withdrawn all allegations. Not for the first time, it seems, Mkhwebane’s desire for a predetermined outcome took precedence over the evidence.

The protector’s “source”? Cedrick Nkabinde, who has a history of double-dealing and is, by any standard, not “a reliable source”. This information is publicly available. Yet she accepts his discredited complaints as gospel while swatting aside facts presented by McBride’s lawyers.

Inexplicably, Mkhwebane even quotes at length a laughable conspiracy promoted by her discredited complainant. Nkabinde claimed that McBride held a secret meeting that “sought to plot how to usurp power of the entire security cluster”, including the National Prosecuting Authority, crime intelligence, the SA Security Agency, and the directorate of priority crime investigation.

In short, Nkabinde alleged a treasonous coup. Gratuitously, Mkhwebane reproduces this fatuous accusation in full, across four pages, with no comment whatsoever. Among conspirators said to be present concocting the diabolical plot were private investigator Paul O’Sullivan, his lawyer Sarah-Jane Trent, McBride, an Ipid officer, Nkabinde himself, “a white lady called Candice”, and, “two white males (representatives of AfriForum and Democratic Alliance/DA), a white lady (journalist) and one black male who was busy preparing fire for the braai”. AfriForum, nogal, allegedly “guaranteed that the funds were available to carry out this mission”.

Astonishingly, the public protector repeats this pitiful farrago in its entirety, without reservations or evaluation. This comes from a parallel universe, one we inherited from Jacob Zuma and that, on this evidence, Mkhwebane still inhabits.

Nkabinde also claimed that the immediate focus of the plot was to bring down Lt-Gen Khomotso Phahlane to prevent him from being confirmed as national police commissioner. This ludicrous allegation had no bearing on the case Mkhwebane claimed to be investigating. Nor did she see fit to note that the dishonest Phahlane was arrested months before over a corrupt R84m tender. So what on earth could be the purpose of making such paranoid fabrications public, with no caveat to indicate that she is able to distinguish fact from fiction? Alas, laying out such crude slanders with no disclaimer looks alarmingly like a political hatchet job.

Here is the record of the man she relies on: as an Ipid officer Nkabinde investigated KGB” Tshabalala, a criminal-cum-police spy. Yet when that megacrook was arrested, KGB s attorney revealed that Nkabinde secretly offered to testify on KGB’s behalf. He denied this, but in 2018 a magistrate ruled there was overwhelming evidence that Nkabinde had misled the court.

More dramatically, he seems to have played a strange role in bribing delegates at the 2017 ANC elective conference to vote for the “Zuma faction”. Foiled at the last moment by McBride and his investigators, the vote was narrowly won by Cyril Ramaphosa. No thanks to Nkabinde: he was the Ipid officer who, it was discovered, had first been tipped off about this plot but inexplicably failed to pass on the bombshell information to his bosses.

This is where Mkhwebane’s report becomes seriously disturbing. She quotes a Supreme Court of Appeal judgment that she need not be limited to the issues raised “but should investigate further and discover the truth and inspire confidence that the truth has been discovered”.

So did she widen her probe to see if Nkabinde is a reliable witness? Did she check available reports about that R45m bribe scam that, as an Ipid officer, he apparently failed to report? She could have googled all this to check his credibility. But no, she turned her head away from the big issue and instead narrowed her probe down to his complaint, already dismissed by the PSC, that Ipid irregularly hired a cellphone expert to analyse death threats made against its investigators.

It took a high court ruling to halt corrupt senior policemen from launching what the judge termed “revenge investigations” against Ipid officers. Perhaps the protector’s latest “finding” is a last and rather desperate attempt to make the smears stick. Mkhwebane’s report is so defective that it appears to have been motivated either by an eccentrically misplaced faith that she is answerable only to God, or simply by bad faith. It certainly doesn’t, as she quotes, “inspire confidence that the truth has been discovered”.

Various courts have questioned Mkhwebane’s impartiality, honesty and competence. This latest report suggests an added trait: provocateur?

● Rostron is a journalist and author of books on Robert McBride, among others