Mosebenzi Zwane’s surprise arrival at Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s birthday party in 2020 emerged during cross-examination at the section 194 committee meeting on Thursday.
“You cannot socialise with a person that you are investigating. It’s a sign of conflict,” said Sphelo Samuel, an attorney and senior investigator in the public protector’s office.
Mkhwebane’s lawyer, Dali Mpofu, former state security minister Bongani Bongo and Mzwanele Manyi, spokesperson for former president Jacob Zuma’s foundation, were among Mkhwebane’s guests at the party.
Mpofu said Mkwhebane’s evidence would be that Zwane “rocked up” uninvited at the event, which took place about two years after she concluded her first report on the Vrede dairy scam.
He interrogated Samuel’s incomplete grasp of various court rulings adverse to Mkhwebane. He said Samuel was disgruntled and a “phantom witness” who allowed the evidence leaders to introduce negative evidence.
“It could have been anybody sitting there,” Mpofu said.
Samuel referred to several court judgments with severe findings against Mkwhebane, arguing they showed her incompetence and litigious bent. He criticised Mkhwebane for excluding politicians Ace Magashule and Zwane from scrutiny in her first probe into the Vrede dairy project.
Mpofu asserted Samuel gave a “skewed perspective on the public protector’s achievements by only highlighting the negative but not the positives.” He suggested the witness had a “fertile imagination” and was a “creative person” whose version of events was more “spy novel” than fact.
During cross-examination Samuel agreed he had no evidence to support his belief that Mkhwebane could have sourced information about staff in her office from the state security agency (SSA).
Samuel said Mkhwebane, previously an SSA analyst, raised little-known details about a colleague in a meeting as a form of intimidation.
Samuel claimed Mkwhebane created a toxic work environment in which staff were purged, but Mpofu suggested they were disciplined for legitimate reasons, and not ulterior motives.
The witness, who has worked in the office for almost 20 years, testified Mkwhebane initially dismissed an invitation to meet then Free State premier Magashule in March 2017.
She was in the province for a countrywide roadshow and due to visit the provincial legislature. Initially, he said, Mkwhebane was not interested in meeting Magashule privately.
However, after a phone call from an unknown person, she agreed. The next day Mkhwebane and Magashule met alone, when her investigation into the Vrede dairy scam was still in progress.
Samuel and another witness, Tebogo Kekana, said Mkwhebane ordered staff to omit adverse findings against the two politicians from the Vrede report. Her first report did not find against them.
“You want this committee to believe that her decision to meet with the premier had something to do with this phone call?” Mpofu asked. Samuel replied, “That is my belief. I don’t know if the committee will follow the same belief but that was my suspicion at the time and it still is.”
Mpofu said Mkhwebane’s evidence would be that “she never got any phone call that made her change her mind” about meeting Magashule.
Samuel’s cross-examination continues on Friday. MPs will pose questions as well.
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