Court suspends report on Oscar Mabuyane

THE Bhisho High Court has suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s report into allegations of corruption by Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane and Public Works MEC Babalo Madikizela.

This after the legal teams of Mabuyane and Madikizela argued before Judge Rossan Kruger that the failure to grant interim relief, pending the final review of the report, would prejudice the political careers of their clients.

Mkhwebane had found Mabuyane and Madikizela to have “improperly” benefited from R450 000 and R350 000 respectively to ferry mourners to a memorial service of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in Mbizana in 2018.

Mkhwebane said Mabuyane used the money to renovate his home in East London. But Mabuyane has argued that he borrowed the money from Madikizela and had repaid it by the time Mkhwebane was to start an investigation into him.

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC, for Mabuyane, told the court that when the public protector began her investigation in December 2019, Mabuyane told her in writing that he had a loan agreement with Madikizela and that by the time she began her investigation, he had already repaid the loan.

“She (Mkhwebane) has not referred to that letter or the proof of payment. You cannot run an investigation on a one-track mentality. There is gross incompetence or possibly a double agenda,” Ngcukaitobi said.

“The ANC’s rule is clear: once there are allegations of corruption against you, report yourself to the (ANC’s) integrity commission and step aside. Now we have a premier who potentially can lose his job because of this gross incompetence by the public protector.”

Advocate Anton Katz SC, for Madikizela, argued that the public protector’s report needed to be set aside.

Judge Kruger ordered that the public protector’s remedial action recommended in her report on the investigation into allegations of corruption, maladministration and misuse of public funds by Mabuyane and Madikizela be “suspended and the public protector is interdicted from enforcing her remedial order” against the two”.