New protector one more feckless Zupta fox in the henhouse

FINALLY the country got to hear from new public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane this week. She called a press conference to announce that she was going to sue somebody. She apparently wants to protect her precious reputation — or what’s left of it.

Appointed to protect the public, the first significant thing she does is seek to protect her integrity. She’s lost the plot. She’s self-absorbed. It’s all about her — the public protector from hell.

If her reputation has been impugned, she has nobody to blame but herself.

Mkhwebane is the author of her own misfortune. She walked into that office intent on dismantling her predecessor’s good character and achievements.

In doing so, she has earned nothing but derision and contempt.

It appears Mkhwebane is on a revenge mission, with a to-do list meticulously honed down to menial tasks such as insisting that the office TV be switched on to the Gupta channel. That’s the mark of somebody with dictatorial tendencies.

Barely a week after taking office she was in parliament presenting a report compiled by her predecessor. Ideally, Mkhwebane should have recused herself or sought postponement of the meeting.

But no, it was a perfect platform from which to complain to startled MPs that she was taking over an office with very low staff morale.

How she had come to such a conclusion after only a few days in office nobody asked. It was obviously a dig at Thuli Madonsela, the messiah who had been so focused on solving everybody else’s problems that she failed to notice the fire in her own back yard.

It was music to the ears of the likes of Mathole Motshekga, President Jacob Zuma’s pre-eminent praise singer, who lauded her for being “a team player”.

For the benefit of the gallery Mkhwebane also undertook not to use consultants or accept donor funding, yet it was Madonsela’s critics, who accused her of being a CIA spy, or pursuing a so-called regime change agenda, who forced her to seek outside assistance. It was Motshekga who repeatedly treated her requests for extra funding almost like declarations of war.

And when the portfolio committee on communication invited Mkhwebane to give evidence on the public protector’s report on the SABC, she demurred. She either didn’t have the time or the report spoke for itself. Instead, she gave the very people who gave her the job the two-finger salute.

Mkhwebane’s war on Madonsela has been relentless. She spent her first 100 days in office on nothing else but attempts to drag her predecessor’s legacy through the mud — even threatening to cancel South Africa’s hosting of an ombudsman conference in Durban if Madonsela, who was due to receive an award, was invited.

Mkhwebane later issued a lukewarm denial, but the allegation fitted a pattern.

She also denied that she had laid a charge against Madonsela for releasing the state capture report to certain news outlets. She had merely reported the matter to the police. Only a spy could figure out the difference.

She appears to have decided to do nothing about the state capture report. When Zuma went to court to challenge it, she instructed her legal team to sit on the fence. Thus far she has singularly failed to pursue the matter.

This week she denied that she was in the pocket of either Zuma or the Guptas. But her actions and utterances are loyal to their agenda. She has joined the ranks of those who have been roped in to either destroy reputable institutions or subvert them for nefarious ends.

However, the people who have suffered most from her capriciousness are the staff in her office.

She’s wreaked havoc, especially among those who worked closely with Madonsela. Some have even been frogmarched out of the building by security, in a move obviously designed to humiliate. Mkhwebane forgets that her staff are also members of the public. They, too, deserve to be protected. Instead, she behaves like a fox let loose in a henhouse.

How parliament decided she was the ideal candidate for the job of public protector remains a mystery.

When the DA accused her of being a spy, other parties saw that as enough reason to support her. They ignored the message because they didn’t like the messenger. Now they regret their silence.

Some argue that passing judgment on Mkhwebane so early in her tenure is premature, citing Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, who was trashed by critics when he was appointed, as a case in point. But that scepticism was justified given that he was plucked from obscurity and appointed over the heads of seasoned jurists.

Mogoeng also did himself no favours with his comments at his Judicial Service Commission hearing.

But he got down to work and was able to eventually win over his critics. The fact that he works in a team environment may also have helped to sway his mindset.

Mkhwebane must do her job properly if she is to dispel the widely held view that she is no more than yet another feckless deployee out to destroy a fine institution.