EFF plan in works to remove protector – Malema
THE Economic Freedom Fighters has come out guns blazing against Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, accusing her of destroying that office, and saying it was working on a plan to remove her.
The EFF said it regretted its decision to back Mkhwebane for the job last year.
EFF leader Julius Malema said yesterday they should have listened when they were told Mkhwebane was planted by the ANC.
They chose to give her a chance, but the Public Protector’s action seems to confirm the accusations against her.
The DA raised the issue of Mkhwebane being a spy when she was interviewed by Parliament last year, but Malema said they were giving her the benefit of the doubt.
Yesterday the Public Protector’s office refused to be drawn into allegations and views of the EFF and DA about the CIEX report which has noted suspicions over Mkhwebane’s handling of the report into the South African Reserve Bank’s financial rescue of Bankorp during the apartheid era.
Malema said they were looking into plans to rescue the Office of the Public Protector and remove Mkhwebane.
Mkhwebwane had failed to defend the Office of the Public Protector, he said. “We must stop calling her the public protector and start calling her the state protector,” he said.
The EFF waited for the DA to take Mkhwebane to court to prove its suspicions, he said. His party regretted supporting Mkhwebane – “a puppet from the Guptas’ kitchen” – to be appointed to the office in the first place and decided at the time to give it a chance.
The EFF also rejected what it termed disingenuous political campaigns such as the “Absa Pay Back the Money” forum, which it said was a Gupta- and state security-sponsored campaign aimed at saving the “kleptocratic statuesque”.
Mkhwebane’s spokesman Oupa Segalwe said they would not comment on the leaked report on Absa.
He said parties who felt aggrieved have until the end of February to comment on the provisional findings of the report.
Meanwhile, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association has called for a judicial commission of inquiry to be established.
MKMVA chairman Kebby Maphatsoe questioned why at the dawn of democracy an audit into the “fraudulent activities” of the loan was not undertaken. “The wealth that made a few white families rich and buttressed white privilege was not just a case of excellent entrepreneurship. It was brazen fraud deliberately committed to impoverish the indigenous people while ensuring white privilege endures beyond democratic change.”