Basani Baloyi, a former COO of the public protector’s office, claims Busisiwe Mkwhebane fostered a culture of mistrust and insecurity.
She appeared before a National Assembly committee on Monday, as hearings into Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office and possible impeachment resumed.
Baloyi alleged the threat of disciplinary action was ever present in the office. She claimed Mkhwebane’s leadership style was so “authoritarian” that she insisted on being called “madam”.
“She must be bowed down to,” Baloyi claimed.
Baloyi joins a growing list of former and current public protector’s office employees accusing Mkhwebane of running the section 9 organisation with a heavy hand and dabbling in ANC factional politics.
She said Mkhwebane was determined to end a backlog of more than 450 cases and set impossible and unrealistic short-term targets to that end. Baloyi also claimed Mkhwebane placed unreasonable demands on staff under threat of disciplinary action.
Staff were under sustained extreme pressure to complete reports, working through nights and over weekends. Taking leave was discouraged. This compromised the quality of reports, Baloyi said.
She said that she warned Mkhwebane about rushing a probe into procurement issues at the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid). The directorate’s then head Robert McBride took the final report on review in the high court and won.
“Her chosen way was to threaten, impose and brook no other views,” read Baloyi’s affidavit.
Baloyi claimed Mkhwebane wrote to her about a “camp” of now public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, which the public protector claimed was geared at “sabotage” as she was finalising a probe into a controversial unit in the SA Revenue Service (Sars).
In her final report of July 2019 on the unit, which was nullified by the high court the next year, Mkhwebane found Gordhan violated the constitution by approving the unit’s creation when he was Sars commissioner.
In 2020, the North Gauteng High Court found Mkhwebane “simply dismissed out of hand and completely ignored and irrationally discarded hard facts and clear evidence. It is clear that she approached her investigation with a preconceived notion, determined to make adverse findings against minister Gordhan … thereby promoting the false rogue unit narrative.”
Baloyi said she received WhatsApp messages in late May 2019, as the office was finalising its report into the high-risk investigating unit. She said Mkhwebane wrote (punctuation added for clarity):
“COO, I worked with a few people to deal with the sabotage of the [Pravin Gordhan] camp, the notice is almost ready for rogue, will issue this week and report will also be released in the manner I will determine.
“The notice for the president is also ready, will call him this week to discuss the notice. It is not about you but one has to play the chess.”
In parliament, Baloyi testified: “What worried the most, chair, was that last statement that you are playing chess […] whatever the outcome of an investigation should be based on facts.” It was her impression “political games” were at play under Mkhwebane.
The former COO claimed that under Mkhwebane, staff became so distressed by a “culture of disrespect and victimisation” that the office began to resemble an institution for people living with mental health challenges.
“Staff wellness suffered. People were simply ill, physically and psychologically,” said Baloyi.
She disagreed with former CEO Vussy Mahlangu’s reluctance to grant a co-worker’s leave request to bury a relative. Baloyi’s eight-year-old daughter fell ill in August 2019 and had to go to hospital.
“The CEO refused to allow me to take leave,” she wrote in her statement.
While the public protector offered sympathy, said Baloyi, she soon warned her she would be subject to disciplinary action for failing to meet a deadline on the day her daughter went to hospital.
Baloyi testified that Mkhwebane and Mahlangu saw her as an obstacle to “their personal agendas” in the office. Mahlangu previously told the committee he was not a “henchman” for Mkhwebane.
She accused Mahlangu of interfering in investigations and claimed Mkhwebane bypassed executive managers to assign probes to investigators.
The hearing resumes on Tuesday.
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