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Section 194 committee members seem to have seen through Mkhwebane’s tactics
Unlike Zuma, Mkhwebane knew she could not walk out, but being abandoned by her legal team during a sitting is the equivalent of a walkout.
Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane. Picture: Neil McCartney
On 19 November, 2020, former president Jacob Zuma walked out of the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture after his application for then Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo to recuse himself had failed.
Zuma simply did not return from a short recess. A shocked Zondo had to make the announcement that Zuma had left without his permission. The walkout was clearly part of a strategy to collapse the commission. It didn’t work and eight months later he was jailed for the act.
His sentencing set a precedent, but his walkout had set another precedent in the Stalingrad legal tactics much loved by the proponents of radical economic transformation (RET) within the ruling party. Simply, if legal proceedings are not to their liking, they can walk out.
Suspended public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s legal team dropped her as a client during the sitting of the parliamentary committee looking into her fitness to hold office. Her advocate, Dali Mpofu, informed the committee that his mandate only went as far as that day’s proceedings, meaning that his instruction from the instructing attorney only went up to that point.
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Eerily, like in the walkout by Zuma, Mkhwebane’s legal team ditched her after their attempt to get the chair of the committee, Qubudile Dyantyi, to recuse himself had failed. Earlier, they had attempted and failed to have evidence leader Nazreen Bawa removed.
Unlike Zuma, Mkhwebane knew she could not walk out, but being abandoned by her legal team during a sitting is the equivalent of a walkout.
This legal tactic is an established part of the Stalingrad defence. It forces the court or committee to grant the defendant more time to brief a new legal team. But the real aim of the tactic is to buy time until a favourable event not totally unrelated to the matter comes to pass.
In this case, if this tactic does buy Mkhwebane more time, she will surely use that time to continue her bid to return to office, before the ruling party’s elective conference in December. This would give her time to deal with the real reason she’s fighting to get back in office: deal with RET nemesis, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has unwittingly provided that faction with an appetising bone by clumsily hiding millions in foreign currency in sofas.
First prize for the RET forces would be to ensure the president does not get to stand for re-election in December.
The Section 194 committee members seem to have seen through this tactic by Mkhwebane and some have gone as far as calling her tactics bullying behaviour.
The committee has spent so much time discussing issues that do not concern Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office, but more on issues relating to the committee itself and how she views it as biased towards her.
Together with her legal team and all those who stand to benefit from her continued stay in office, they must have calculated that the most important event for their cause is for her to stay in office long enough to scupper Ramaphosa’s re-election ambitions.
Although the president has shown that he himself is no saint and has a committee currently sitting to assess his Phala Phala blunder, the implementation of the Zondo commission report hinges on his own continued stay in office.
Should the RET faction succeed in blocking his re-election, either through legal means or getting him declared not fit to hold office, then the National Prosecuting Authority can be easily captured, again, and all those that looted the country blind will go scot-free.
