SAFTU calls on the Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane to step down!

23 July 2019

SAFTU has noted the damning and scathing Constitutional Court judgement which not only dismissed Public Protector’s appeal against personal cost order by the North Gauteng High Court but which has branded her a liar and therefore dishonest. 

SAFTU view this condemnation of the Public Protector by the apex court of our land in a serious light. You cannot be an officer of the court and then be found wanting when it comes to the basic ethical standards. Our Protector has been found to lie under oath. No appeal could be lodged against the judgement. 

SAFTU calls on the Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane to do the honourable thing! She must immediately resign! We can’t see any other way of protecting the dignity of the office of the Public Protector. If she does not quit, SAFTU will support the parliamentary process to have her removed. 

SAFTU took the same position when the Constitutional Court made almost a similar judgement against the former President, Jacob Zuma and others.

Our call has absolutely nothing to do, though noteworthy, with the current appeals against her recent remedial actions by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan and President Cyril Ramaphosa. These cases must run their course in the courts.  

No one must use the damning Constitutional Court judgement to suggest that these two cases will automatically follow the same condemnation of the Public Protector as in the case of the ABSA/Bankorp/Reserve Bank and Vrede Dairy Farm project. It would be disingenuous to do so. Each case must stand and fall in the courts based on its own merits. 

We cannot follow the pass one pass all doctrine in courts or anywhere else. 

Issued by SAFTU, 23 July 2019