ADVOCATE Busisiwe Mkhwebane has been booted out as the public protector!
For the first time in history of Mzansi’s democracy on Monday, 11 September, members of parliament (MPs) debated and voted on the removal of the head of the chapter 9 institution.
After a fierce debate, 318 MPs, mainly from the ANC and the DA voted in favour of Mkhwebane’s axing.
Only 43 voted against it and one abstained.
Tabling the report before Parliament, chairman of the Parliament’s Committee for the Section 194 Enquiry Qubudile Dyantyi said it was crystal clear that Mkhwebane was not fit and proper to hold the high office of public protector.
“I have no doubt that this process will forever be recorded in the history books of our nation as a reminder to every person who performs a public function that you are accountable for your actions,”
“Institutions and office bearers must work within the law and must be accountable. Put simply, ours is a government of laws and not of men or women,” said Dyantyi.
He said from the onset, Mkhwebane indicated that she was participating in the inquiry under protest.
The committee was established on 16 March 2021 by the National Assembly to probe her fitness to hold office and on 22 August 2023 it recommended she should be fired. Mkhwebane was suspended in June 2022.
She has always claimed that the committee had adopted an adversarial approach and she maintained that the process was unfair and biased, and outcome was predetermined.
UDM President Bantu Holomisa said the ousting of Mkhwebane was connected to her investigation into allegations that President Cyril Ramaphosa violated executive ethics code through his relationship with Bosasa.
”In June 2018, Mkhwebane committed the cardinal sin of doing her job too well," he said.
At the end of his speech, Holomisa handed over an envelope he claimed contained names of people who allegedly received payments in the CR17 saga.
EFF MP Omphile Maotwe said the report they were required to endorse was a product of a process that has been grossly unfair and a vindictive political witch-hunt against the public protector.
“The findings in the report that the PP demonstrated incompetency in relation to the charges against her, which were therefore predetermined. This is the mandate that the chairperson and the evidence leaders were given, and these findings were made without affording the PP with her constitutionally enshrined rights to legal representation,” she said.
The impeachment process cost a staggering R160 million that some speakers said it was money the taxpayers won't get back.
