Mkhwebane is taking the country for a ride

Looking at how sacked public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane displays her apparent lack of understanding of labour law – never mind common sense – it is not difficult to see why she was repeatedly hauled over the coals by the courts for her legal incompetence.

In terms of basic labour law, she was an employee – albeit a special one whose conditions of services and behaviour were adjudicated by parliament itself – and she was fired for her sub-standard performance.

If that happens to an “ordinary” worker, they will hand over their proverbial access card and be escorted from the building. There would be no entitlement to any gratuity or bonus. The relationship would be terminated, to quote the thriller movies, “with extreme prejudice”.

Yet Mkhwebane thinks she is different and is entitled to a R10 million “golden handshake” – the payment legally prescribed for a public protector who comes to the end of his or her term without a blemish, performance-wise.

ALSO READ: Mkhwebane takes Public Protector to court over R10m gratuity

Now she wants that refusal to pay the R10 million declared unconstitutional and invalid and, if she is true to form, may also want her latest legal costs paid.

Like Jacob Zuma, who Mkhwebane effectively defended or obscured actions against in the wake of the state capture scandal, she believes in the “Stalingrad defence”, by fighting on and on by raising irrelevant legal points.

This is not only a waste of expensive court resources, it borders on contempt for our legal system. She’s trying to take us – an entire country – for a ride and she must be stopped.

We hope that her latest legal grandstanding is stopped in its tracks… but we believe that it is time that the courts declared her – and Zuma – as “vexatious litigants”, because the sole purpose of their actions is to harass various arms of the state.

ALSO READ: Mkhwebane to go to court to get pension and R10m payment – report