Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has obtained an urgent interdict to prevent President Cyril Ramaphosa acting on a public protector finding that she secured an “unfair advantage” for her son to use electronic tablets owned by the provincial government.
The Pretoria High Court order temporarily prevents Ramaphosa, the Western Cape legislature speaker and the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) chair acting on Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s finding that Zille gave her mathematics teacher son an “unfair advantage” when she facilitated access to the tablets for him to give free extra lessons to disadvantaged students.
They did not oppose Zille’s action. The court granted Zille’s application, pending resolution of her legal challenge to the procedural fairness, legality and rationality of Mkhwebane’s finding.
The public protector found that Zille violated the constitution, the Public Protector Act and the Executive Ethics Code by helping her son, Paul Maree, borrow tablets from the Western Cape education department.
Maree was at the time employed by the Western Cape education department at a Khayelitsha school and was not paid for the lessons.
Mkhwebane found that while Maree’s intentions may have been good, it was wrong of Zille to facilitate the loan of the tablets.
Zille's actions had exposed her to a risk of a conflict of interest and “consequently resulted in the violation of her constitutional obligation to avoid an exposure to the aforesaid risk”, she found
The public protector ordered that a copy of her report be provided to Ramaphosa, who then had 14 days to submit it with his comments to the NCOP. The NCOP chair was charged to “ensure that the report is processed”, and the Western Cape legislature's speaker was ordered to table the report before the legislature “for it to take appropriate action”.
Zille denied vehemently that her intervention involved any conflict of interest as officials were fully aware that Maree was her son and she had written an e-mail stating that the tablets should be made available to any NGOs or individuals seeking to offer free extra maths training.
In an act unheard of in SA’s highly polarised political life, the ANC’s Angie Motshekga, the basic education minister, criticised Mkhwebane, saying that she feared that children of political figures would be barred from doing community work.
Zille’s court order came as the presidency confirmed earlier on Tuesday that Ramaphosa was meeting Mkhwebane to discuss a controversial donation that Bosasa, the facilities companies implicated in allegations of corruption involving government officials, made to his ANC presidential campaign.
Ramaphosa initially told parliament that the R500,000 was paid in a business transaction to his son, but later backtracked and said he had subsequently learnt that it was a donation to his 2017 campaign to lead the governing party, a race he won narrowly against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
The DA laid that complaint.
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