Cape Town - The public protector’s Free State head, Sphelo Samuel, has told Parliament’s Committee for Section 194 Inquiry that a letter he wrote to suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, asking her to resign after she lost a number of court judgments, caused his 2020 suspension.
As the inquiry resumed its hearings into Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office, Samuel testified with regard to her investigation into the controversial Gupta-linked Vrede Dairy Farm Project in the Free State and the reasons why there was a complaint against her in the matter.
Samuel, who was recently reinstated, testified that days after he sent his email to Mkhwebane in 2020 he found himself charged with several allegations of misconduct and was suspended.
Before he began his testimony, one of the committee’s evidence leaders, Ncumisa Mayosi, gave background to the matter and said the complaint against Mkhwebane emanated from three complaints lodged with the public protector by the DA’s Free State legislature MPL Roy Jankielsohn.
She said before that, the national Treasury had itself investigated the Vrede dairy projects in June 2013 when it examined procurement irregularities allegedly committed by the Free State Agriculture and Rural Development department.
The complaints against Mkhwebane included that she narrowed the scope of the investigation requested by Jankielsohn without providing a rational or proper explanation.
The first report on the project by Mkhwebane was set aside by the high court after successful action by the DA.
The judgment in the matter said: “The steps taken by Public Protector Mkhwebane in the conduct of the investigation were wholly inadequate considering the magnitude and importance of the matter.”
When evidence leader advocate Nazreen Bawa SC took Samuel through his testimony, he said the probe began under Mkhwebane’s predecessor as public protector, advocate Thuli Madonsela, and was inherited by Mkhwebane when she took office as the investigation had not been completed.
He said before he joined the investigation he sat in on a think-tank where the probe was discussed. While there, he had learnt that Madonsela was unhappy as not enough attention had been given to the role played by politicians in the dairy scandal. It was then that she gave the investigation to him to pursue.
Samuel testified that in March 2017, during the investigation, and while Mkhwebane was on a public protector roadshow in the Free State, which would include a visit to the dairy, he received a message from the then Free State Premier Ace Magashule inviting Mkhwebane to visit him at his office in the legislature.
He said he and other colleagues were sitting in Mkhwebane’s hotel room at the time and her initial reaction was to say she didn’t take instructions from Magashule and in any case she didn’t know him.
Shortly afterwards, Mkhwebane received a phone call and when she returned to the group she said she had changed her mind and would meet Magashule after all.
Samuel said when they accompanied Mkhwebane to the fourth floor, where Magashule’s office was, Magashule and Mkhwebane met privately for about 20 minutes.
The hearings continue today with Samuel’s cross-examination by Mkhwebane’s lawyer Dali Mpofu SC.
Meanwhile, Mpofu told committee chairperson Qubudile Dyantyi that he wrote to President Ramaphosa on July 19 inviting him to voluntarily appear before the committee to testify but on Monday this week Ramaphosa declined the invitation.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za