COMMITTEE FOR SECTION 194 ENQUIRY HEARS FROM SUBPOENAED WITNESS
Parliament, Monday, 18 July 2022 – The Committee for Section 194 Enquiry today heard evidence from a subpoenaed witness, Mr Tebogo Kekana, dealing mainly with the Public Protector’s report on the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).
The committee was established by the National Assembly (NA) on 16 March 2021 to conduct a enquiry into the Public Protector’s Adv Busisiwe Mkhwebane fitness to hold office. Mr Kekana went into great detail regarding the compilation of information and drafting of the Public Protector’s CIEX/Bankorp/SARB report, claiming that he was instructed by the PP to add findings that the SARB should be nationalised. He explained that he was employed in Adv Mkhwebane’s office as an investigator, where he was tasked with making notes and recording meetings.
Adv Mkhwebane requested a meeting with the State Security Agency (SSA) and asked him to attend. This meeting occurred on 3 May 2017, after the provisional report had been finalised. Mr Kekana told the committee that he attended the meeting with Adv Mkhwebane and representatives of the SSA, Mr James Ramabulane and Mr Arthur Fraser, in order to obtain further submissions from the SSA on the investigation. He said the Minister of State Security at the time, Mr David Mahlobo, also attended this meeting.
On the day of the meeting, he was informed that Adv Mkhwebane was having a discussion with Minister Mahlobo prior to the meeting. “I was not party to this discussion. I found it odd that Adv Mkhwebane would hold a discussion by herself with one of the attendees of an interview, without anyone else present.
“The formal meeting then began. When the meeting with the SSA began, I took out my notepad in order to take notes of the meeting and took out my recording device in order to record the meeting, as I usually do. Adv Mkhwebane, however, instructed me not to record the meeting. She also instructed me not to take notes during the meeting. I was extremely surprised by both these instructions,” Mr Kekana said.
The committee heard that Adv Mkhwebane informed Mr Kekana that the report should include a recommendation that the Constitution must be amended in order to allow for the SARB to be nationalised. The recommendation was never made in meetings he attended related to the report.
In November 2017, Mr Kekana was called to meet with a senior Human Resources manager and told that Adv Mkhwebane did not want him working in her office because he spoke too much to lawyers. Notice was given of intention to place him on precautionary suspension in a letter dated 29 July 2019. On 1 August 2019, he said: “After my laptop was returned to me after being seized, I noticed that all the emails stored in my archive folder from the email addresses from 2017 had disappeared.”
Under cross-examination, Mr Kekana conceded that he had been unwilling to testify and had to be subpoenaed. This was because he was hesitant about how much he could remember of the events and he has litigation pending before the labour court.
Committee Chairperson Mr Qubudile Dyantyi indicated that tomorrow the committee will continue with cross-examination of Mr Kekana. The committee is expected to finalise its work by the end of September 2022. The enquiry is hybrid and can be followed live on Parliament’s media platforms.
Statement issued by Chairperson of the Committee for Section 194 Enquiry, Qubudile Dyantyi, 18 January 2022
