Former public protector Thuli Madonsela said on Tuesday she had not signed off on a provisional report into the Vrede Dairy investigation, potentially affecting one of the charges against her successor, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, at her impeachment inquiry.
The nub of the charges against Mkhwebane on her Vrede Dairy investigation and report is that she narrowed the scope of the investigation and excluded making findings against the politicians implicated in the scandal.
The high court in Pretoria said that Mkhwebane narrowed the investigation so dramatically it “sidestepped all the crucial aspects regarding the complaints and led to a failure on her part to execute her constitutional duty”.
But one of the charges in the charge sheet specifically states that Mkhwebane “materially altered the remedial action proposed in the provisional report [prepared by her predecessor, Madonsela] before issuing the final report, without offering any rational or proper explanation therefor”.
Madonsela told the section 194 committee on Tuesday morning that a document entitled a “provisional report” that they had been looking at, and that had her name at the bottom, was not signed and had not been quality assured. “It’s not a provisional report,” she said.
Good Party MP Brett Herron asked Madonsela how politicians came to be included in the Vrede Dairy investigation when the first investigator, Erika Cilliers, had in “several versions” not found evidence or any reason to implicate politicians.
Madonsela said it was not true there had been no drafts at all from Cilliers that had not implicated politicians. The first draft from Cilliers had mentioned the involvement of former Free State premier Ace Magashule, she said.
Herron asked Madonsela why she had asked Sphelo Samuel to take over the Vrede investigation, after Cilliers’ draft provisional report had been presented and in which no politicians had been implicated.
Madonsela said the problem with Cilliers’ draft provisional report was that nobody at all was named for the misconduct — “literally nobody, whether official or politician”.
“The actors who did the wrong things did not have names or faces,” she said.
Madonsela said the public protector had been criticised in a judgment for not taking into account allegations that were in the public domain, and at that time there were allegations in the media that politicians were implicated in the Vrede scandal.
She said she had asked Samuel to take over the investigation because no forensic investigation had been done. According to their standard operating protocol, this must be done when there is a possibility of corruption.
The day, which saw the end of Madonsela’s testimony, included another extended back and forth between Madonsela and Mkhwebane’s counsel, Dali Mpofu, about her affidavits submitted to the inquiry and whether they were legally compliant.
Madonsela was questioned again on her time at the helm of the public protector. She said for most of her testimony she felt as if she was “the accused”.
She was asked whether she would have actively involved state security agencies in the work of the public protector. The relevance of this question related to evidence by former investigator Tebogo Kekana, who testified that the State Security Agency (SSA) drafted a portion of a 2017 public protector report that directed parliament to amend the mandate of the Reserve Bank.
Madonsela said she would “definitely not” involve the SSA, or any department, because the role of the public protector was an oversight one in relation to organs of state. “So you want to make sure you have an arm’s-length relationship,” she said.
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