A DRAMA WORTHY OF HOLLYWOOD

THE future of suspended public protector, advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, is turning out to be a dramatic, if not theatrical, affair.

While fighting for her professional life in a bid to avoid being the first public protector to be relieved of her duties, Mkhwebane was waging a separate war in the Western Cape High Court to have her suspension by President Cyril Ramaphosa set aside.

This struggle eventually bore fruit for Mkhwebane, who has until now not had much luck when it comes to legal matters.

When the ruling eventually arrived, it characterised Ramaphosa’s suspension of Mkhwebane as “retaliatory, unlawful, tainted, irrational and invalid”.

The court cited a certain Phala Phala skeleton in the president’s closet, because she was suspended just as she had begun her investigation into the now widely publicised robbery at the president’s farm.

But if the public protector thought she was just going to walk back into her posh Pretoria office, she had another thing coming.

Her deputy, advocate Kholeka Gcaleka, was having none of it, pointing to a new court application by Mkhwebane to implement the judgment immediately, and the appeal by the DA against that judgment, this time to the Constitutional Court.

The matter has since been joined by other political parties, as well as the president, who denied links between the suspension and Mkhwebane’s Phala Phala probe.

You would think that is dramatic enough; however, yesterday, Mkhwebane asked Parliament to suspend its public hearings into her impeachment inquiry pending her legal challenge. That request was denied.

Ramaphosa wants to prove that his suspension of the public protector was justified.

Mkhwebane, on the other hand, armed with a court ruling, wants her job back so she can presumably complete the Phala Phala probe.

Elsewhere, accusations of deliberately delaying the probe have been levelled at Gcaleka.

Hollywood script writers could not wish for a better storyline.