Suspended public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane on Wednesday received a glowing report from a senior manager in her office who studied with her at university.
Futana Tebele, who now works with the office’s CEO, first joined as a senior manager in Mkhwebane’s private office in 2017. He said they knew one another from university days and were study mates in a group of five.
“But it’s not a personal relationship that I would say every day we were talking ... we would spend two years without talking,” he said.
Tebele called his former classmate-turned-boss a “team player” who paid attention to detail and timelines, showed dedication and expected the best from her staff.
While he saw colleagues reprimanded, in his view this was due to their own shortcomings. Tebele was himself taken to task for not filing a performance agreement. The matter was soon resolved. “I was not under the impression that this had been orchestrated,” he said.
While Mhkwebane “may very well have raised her voice” in meetings, including at him, Tebele was sympathetic. He said she was justified when employees did not do work the way she wanted and gave unsatisfactory explanations why it was taking long.
Mkhwebane, he continued, pushed her team because she wanted faster results and improved quality of reports.
With regard to a rise in litigation involving the office, he argued this was due to the courts’ approach and disgruntled applicants challenging her binding findings. Tebele argued the courts had created the problem by ruling the public protector’s remedial action was binding in the Nkandla case.
“But even so there are more reports issued by the public protector that remain in good standing,” said Tebele.
He told the committee investigating Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office that staff studied adverse judgments and took lessons from the rulings. Tebele agreed with Mkhwebane’s counsel, advocate Dali Mpofu, that the result of a review application could not be predicted.
He testified that he, along with others, was involved in reviewing quality assuring reports: “I never got an instruction to change a report from the public protector.”
Two witnesses, senior investigator Tebogo Kekana and the head of the public protector’s office in the Free State, Sphelo Samuel, have testified that the public protector asked them to leave out “politicians” in their reports.
They also spoke of a tense working environment under Mkhwebane.
Tempers in the public protector’s office “frayed” when investigators had to clock extra hours, including not sleeping and working over weekends, to complete reports on time.
The senior manager said that the office’s working environment was “highly charged and demanding” and Mkhwebane insisted they tackle the backlog of cases dating as far back as six years. “The effect of the backlog-clearing initiative has created a lot of pressure,” he wrote.
Tebele said investigators reported directly to Mkhwebane as well as through their managers, and were under pressure to complete work and attend constant progress meetings. She thought investigators were not living up to the office’s service standards and pressed for compliance with standard operating procedures. he said.
Mkhwebane was highly motivated to end a backlog by September 2021 and “pressure was being applied to everybody with that end goal in mind”. While he did not dispute expectations “may have been perceived to be unreasonable”, he thought Mkhwebane made fair demands.
Tebele compared Mkhwebane’s performance to that of her predecessor, Thuli Madonsela, and thought his boss produced far more reports. He highlighted Mkhwebane inherited a manual case management system which was ineffective in tracking complaints.
“I have not seen [her] intimidate, harass or victimise employees,” wrote Tebele.
The committee sits again on Thursday.
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