Livhuwani Tshiwalule, a former investigator in the Public Protector's office, has told the Section 194 committee into Busisiwe Mkhwebane's impeachment how a political party Black First Land First (BLF) pressed her to complete her report about the R1.125bn “lifeboat” loan the Reserve Bank gave to Bankkorp.
In testimony on Wednesday, he joined the growing list of former and current senior officials who alleged there was external tempering with the office's reports.
Tshiwalule described the investigation during Madonsela's term, which included interviews with former president Thabo Mbeki, the then director general of the presidency, Frank Chikane, former finance minister Trevor Manuel, former Reserve Bank governors Tito Mboweni and Gill Marcus, and former Absa CEO Maria Ramos.
“When the report came back to me [from Mkwhebane] there were a number of changes that were made and this is part of the paragraph that was no longer there,” said Tshiwalule of the omission of these interviewees' names.
He said the investigation was “substantially” complete when Madonsela left and major changes were made to the draft report after Mkhwebane took over. Political party BLF’s leader Andile Mngxitama warned Mkhwebane about unrest if the report was not finalised soon, said Tshiwalule.
He recalled Mkhwebane wanted the report completed urgently because of “pressure from society” over it. Her final report included a recommendation to change the constitutional mandate of the Reserve Bank. It was later thrown out in court. The committee previously heard this remedy was penned by an “economist” in the State Security Agency (SSA).
Tshiwalule did not think an economist’s input on the Reserve Bank’s mandate was warranted, based on the original complaint. He said when Madonsela was in office she “at no stage suggested to me that we needed to engage the services of an economist.”
If expert input was required, he continued, the norm was to run a procurement process to choose an expert followed by supply chain management.
“The issue had nothing to do with the economy,” he said. When Tshiwalule was involved in the investigation, the focus was on why recommendations in the UK company CIEX's report commissioned in 1999 were not implemented. There was nothing, he continued, on the Reserve Bank's constitutional mandate.
Had he been present when the report was finalised, continued Tshiwalule, he would have advised Mkhwebane that consulting with economists would not have been necessary.
Tshwilalule accepted a new job offer a month into Mkhwebane’s term. Mkhwebane wrote to his new employer asking to meet Tshiwalule. In a group meeting with staff from the public protector’s office he was asked about the Reserve Bank/CIEX investigation.
“There were changes affected to the preliminary report that was issued […] I had no idea where they came from,” Tshiwalule said. After the group meeting , police came to his new place of work and his home in connection with a leak of a provisional draft of the report to the press.
“ I said to the police who came there, ‘If you don’t have a search warrant then you are not going to search my house.’ It ended there,” he said.
Tshiwalule testified there was a good content management system for digital and printed material in the public protector’s office when Madonsela was in office. This was at odds with evidence of former CEO Vussy Mahlangu, who said the system was poor.
Advocate Nditsheni Raedani is set to testify on Thursday.
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