Cape Town - Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has congratulated her lawyer, senior counsel Dali Mpofu, and her legal team for securing a judgment in her favour.
In a message from her account on Twitter, Mkhwebane said: “Congratulations to the legal team for this successful leave to appeal the SCA judgment @AdvDali_Mpofu.”
The legal team last week won a high court application for leave to appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) against Section 194 committee chairperson Qubudile Dyantyi (ANC) and committee member Kevin Mileham (DA) for not recusing themselves.
When Mkhwebane first approached the high court on the recusal issue, it ruled that she had brought the issue prematurely.
Mkhwebane’s lawyers then took the matter on review, leading to Judges Rosheni Allie and Judith Cloete ordering that she could proceed to the SCA.
The judges also granted Dyantyi and Mileham conditional applications for leave to cross-appeal at the SCA once the matter gets under way.
Meanwhile, committee hearings meant to have started on Monday were postponed until this morning, racing against the clock to stick to the committee’s revised schedule of 25 sittings.
Monday’s postponement came as a result of Mkhwebane’s newly appointed firm of attorneys, HM Chaane, requesting an indefinite postponement of the sittings, arguing that they were not prepared as they only learnt of Monday’s sitting “in the media” three days before on June 2.
In a letter to Dyantyi, the attorney, Hope Chaane, confirmed she had engaged Mpofu’s services as per Mkhwebane’s request. However, she objected to the committee having “gratuitously and maliciously” released information of how much Mpofu and his team would be earning while negotiations were still under way.
Chaane was reacting to last week’s briefing to the committee by Parliament’s legal adviser, Fatima Ebrahim, who told committee members that Mkhwebane’s legal representation issues had finally been ironed out.
However, Ebrahim had said the achievement had been more costly than expected as Mpofu had asked for a daily rate of R45000.
Ebrahim added that Mpofu’s agreement to continue with the matter came with the proviso that the two junior advocates, who had been part of his team since hearings began, were also taken on at an additional collective amount of R12000 a day.
In his response to Chaane’s complaint about the release of the legal fees, Dyantyi said Mpofu “like all other role-players in this process, is aware that all formal correspondence is tabled in line with Parliament’s duty to facilitate public participation”.
As for the issue of postponement, Dyantyi said as far as he was concerned the only impediment to the legal team’s preparation was that it appeared that Mkhwebane had not given instructions to the attorneys to brief the advocates on time.