Parliament’s section 194 committee tasked with determining advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office will not summons President Cyril Ramaphosa to testify.
MPs decided on Tuesday against compelling the president as she had requested. Chairperson Qududile Dyantyi said the committee found the reasons in Mkhwebane’s request for the summons to be irrelevant to the committee’s mandate.
“There is no need to subpoena the president. The matters which have been raised are not relevant to the matters we need to check,” ANC MP Xola Nqola said.
Freedom Front Plus MP Corné Mulder agreed. “I do not think that there is any need for the president to be summoned with regard to this specific process,” he said.
Brett Herron from GOOD disagreed. “I don’t think we should simply say that the president’s evidence is irrelevant. I think the public protector has an obligation to convince this committee that the evidence the president could give is relevant,” he said.
Governing party MPs Doris Dlakude and Violet Siwela were also against issuing the summons to Ramaphosa.
Parliamentary legal adviser Fatima Ebrahim said Mkhwebane had sent a letter to Ramaphosa asking him to testify. Mkwebane raised her suspension, a legal review of her report on Bosasa’s donation to his CR17 party election campaign, and claims Ramaphosa had made against her in court proceedings.
Judicially exhausted
Ebrahim said the claims included the crime of perjury, which, if true, could constitute impeachable conduct. In response Ramaphosa said via a state attorney letter the perjury point had been raised by his legal team, not him personally.
The suspension, continued the state attorney letter, was before the court. And, as Ebrahim said on the CR17 issue, “The status of the matter now is that it has been judicially exhausted.” Mkhwebane had not proved his input was relevant, the president insisted.
Following receipt of the state attorney’s letter the public protector asked the committee to compel Ramaphosa to appear. Dyantyi noted that the committee’s “singular task” is to establish the veracity of charges DA chief whip Natasha Mazzone had laid against Mkhwebane.
Ebrahim said Ramaphosa should not be “lightly drawn” into hearings as he “may have to perform an executive function” were Mkhwebane to be impeached.
By law, the committee is empowered to summons any person to give evidence it needs to determine the veracity of the charges against Mkhwebane but it has decided against it. “We are not going that route. The request for the subpoena is therefore declined, based on the arguments listed in the legal opinion,” said Dyantyi.
The chair noted Herron’s suggestion that Mkhwebane be granted a second chance to motivate Ramaphosa’s forced appearance. “I think the public protector needs to submit a substantive motivation that meets the very high standard of relevance that the legal opinion sets out,” Herron said.
Delay tactics
Jane Mananiso of the ANC accused Mkhwebane’s team of “delay tactics” in asking former SA Revenue Service executive Johann van Loggerenberg, who testified over three days, to return.
Siwela suggested that Mkhwebane seek clarity from Van Loggerenberg in writing: “We must not lose focus. We must not deviate. If we do […] we are no longer going to be within our time frame.”
The ACDP’s Marie Sukers was worried about the price of a protracted process. “We are in a meter taxi here that is racking up costs. If we do run overtime it has a material cost to the SA taxpayer,” she said.
Nqola was similarly concerned about timekeeping.
Sukers complained that witnesses were “terrified” and intimidated during cross-examination by Mkhwebane’s counsel, advocate Dali Mpofu. The MP claimed it was a “form of injustice” that the committee must not allow.
Dyantyi responded there must be a balance between guarding witnesses and establishing the facts. “Inherent in any cross-examination [is that] it is a hard process,” Dyantyi said. It is up him, MPs and counsel to monitor how witnesses are treated.
Sukers referred particularly to Mpofu’s cross-examination of Free State head of the public protector’s office, Sphelo Samuel. “He’s been asked if he can count from one to ten. All of these things play a huge role in how witnesses are experiencing this committee and its process, as well as how future witnesses come before this committee,” she said.
“People are feeling intimidated. I’m certain of that, just on what I observed,” she said.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.