Bravo, Busisiwe
BY NOW, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane will know just how fickle the South African public can be. On Monday, many people were lambasting her for getting her first ruling so terribly wrong.
But yesterday, tart criticism had changed to cautious praise.
On Monday, the vast majority of those who read newspapers, surf the web and spend time on Twitter and Facebook mocked her mercilessly as she was forced into a humiliating climb-down from an instruction to Parliament to change the mandate of the SA Reserve Bank, and an order to the Special Investigating Unit to recover an apartheid-era “lifeboat” gift of R1.125 billion from Absa.
Even though a powerful line-up of corporations and people – including the Reserve Bank, Absa, the finance minister and the Speaker of Parliament – said the public protector had got it badly wrong, she dug in her heels and seemed to say: “See you in court.” They did – and, as many suspected, it was she who was forced to eat humble pie.
Yesterday, however, the menacing hisses of dissatisfaction quickly changed…
THIS time the person in the spotlight was President Jacob Zuma.
Everyone believed that Mkhwebane would go soft on him. But, on the contrary, her response to the president’s court application was hard – even harsh.
Pointing out that Zuma was trying to retain control over various aspects of the functioning of the envisaged commission of inquiry, she said because the allegations in the State of Capture report implicate him personally and financially, it was impermissible for him to do so.
“His challenge to these aspects of the remedial action has no prospect of success. It is not in the public interest to stay the implementation of the remedial action. It is urgent that the allegations of state capture be properly investigated and determined as soon as possible,” she said.
These few paragraphs will have prompted many South Africans into looking at the public protector with new eyes.
She may well prove to be the one whose actions hurry Zuma into appointing a commission of inquiry. And maybe, just maybe, we will at last see a decisive step being taken towards lancing the ugly boil of corruption and state capture that has so bedevilled our body politic.