Mkhwebane overstepped mark, again and again
PARLIAMENT is considering whether Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane is fit to hold office. It can find either way. However, there is a sense that she did not do herself any favours by the way in which she discharged her role.
This is notwithstanding the many cases that she has been able to resolve but which, when compared with the major ones she has pursued and lost, pale into insignificance.
For one thing, Mkhwebane terribly misconstrued her role as public protector. One could discern in her approach that she was out to prove that she was not her predecessor, Thuli Madonsela.
She displayed an enthusiasm to move the Office of the Public Protector from being critical of the powers that be to an accommodating view of wayward politicians – for example, in some of the Free State cases. This is probably because she thought of herself as a deployed ANC cadre who was required to play an activist political role in bringing about transformation.
Many cases attest to this. A glaring one is that she veered into forbidden territory by wanting to make recommendations about what the policy of the Reserve Bank should be, which was not within her powers.
Again, she injected herself into the political environment when she got involved in the CIEX report about the repayment of monies by institutions that had benefited from apartheid.
It was legitimate to pursue both issues but they should have been left to politicians, not a chapter nine institution such as the public protector.
The mandate is not a messianic one to bring about political change in society, but to uphold the Constitution of the day by, in her case, protecting the rights of those who have suffered abuse. DR THABISI HOEANE | Pretoria