The Constitutional Court on Wednesday dismissed Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s final bid to revoke its previous judgment on her CR17 report
THE CONSTITUTIONAL Court on Wednesday dismissed Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s final bid to revoke its previous judgment on her CR17 report, saying “no case has been made out for rescission”.
Mkhwebane’s initial report on the CR17 campaign and adverse findings were taken on review, which the high court set aside on the grounds that the public protector had “reached an irrational and unlawful conclusion on the facts before her”.
The Constitutional Court also upheld the finding.
Mkhwebane then launched an application to rescind the apex court ruling against her that she altered the words of the Executive Ethics Code to justify a finding that President Cyril Ramaphosa unethically misled Parliament.
The court dismissed Mkhwebane’s rescission bid with costs.
In the findings that have been set aside, Mkwebane’s report published in July 2019 found that President Cyril Ramaphosa had misled Parliament about a R500,000 donation made to his CR17 campaign by the now late Gavin Watson, who was then CEO of Bosasa.
“The public protector’s report reveals that, on the facts placed before her, she accepted that the president did not wilfully mislead Parliament,” Justice Chris Jafta said.
Jafta said that Mkhwebane changed the wording of the code to include “deliberate and inadvertent misleading” so as to match with the facts.
After effecting the change in the code, “the public protector proceeded to conclude that the president had violated the code,” Jafta added.
Mkhwebane is also facing a perjury case over her disastrous efforts to defend her invalidated report on the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).
In her report, Mkhwebane found that the government and SARB failed to recover R3.2bn from Bankorp and Absa.
The report was later reviewed and set aside by the North Gauteng High Court and Mkhwebane ordered to pay some of the costs from her pocket and her bid to challenge it at the Constitutional Court was also unsuccessful.
She is also embroiled in litigation linked to the pending parliamentary inquiry into her fitness to hold office.
