Cape Town - The charge of fruitless and wasteful expenditure against suspended public protector advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane with regard to millions of rand of public funds spent on failed litigation took centre stage at Parliament’s hearings into her fitness to hold office.
When the hearing resumed on Thursday, after a two-week break, the enquiry’s evidence leader, advocate Nazreen Bawa SC, took the committee through a summary of judgments handed down against Mkhwebane.
Bawa said the cost of legal consulting and professional fees incurred by Mkhwebane between the 2016/17 financial year and the just-concluded 2021/22 financial year was R158.9 million, of which R146.9 million was spent on legal fees.
In a partial breakdown of some of the litigation and costs involved, Bawa said the bill for the public protector’s Absa/CIEX report cases came to more than R14 million, which was spent on six different law firms and several different lawyers.
When committee member Kevin Mileham (DA) said he wanted a list indicating the firms and lawyers who had “benefited” from the cases, and to what extent, Bawa said she would endeavour to assist the committee in that regard.
While he said he had no problem with the request, GOOD Party MP Brett Herron warned about using the word “benefited” as it made it sound as though the lawyers had not done any work for the money they were paid.
Meanwhile, Mkhwebane’s legal representative, advocate Dali Mpofu SC, said handing up such information as evidence was an unwarranted and unnecessary invasion of people’s privacy. “There seems to be some zeal to invade people’s personal and financial issues, and it is wrong as, apart from sensationalism, it has no value for the committee.”
Mpofu said the information would present a skewed picture because nobody was saying how much those who had opposed the various matters brought by Mkhwebane had spent on their litigation. He said that unless the matter was put into context to provide the full picture all perspective would be lost and innocent people would be tainted by association with fruitless and wasteful expenditure and be unable to defend themselves.
Committee member Xola Nqola (ANC) argued that there was nothing private about public funds and that the data would be valuable in helping the committee evaluate previous evidence about Mkhwebane’s spending on litigation.
Ruling on the issue, committee chairperson Qubudile Dyantyi said he would watch out for any evidence that appeared to encroach on private financial matters and intervene to prevent it being handed up. He said the committee should be wary of abusing its parliamentary immunity.
Public Protector South Africa’s legal services manager, Muntu Sithole, who said Mkhwebane once paid R87 000 to Paul Ngobeni, a former adviser to Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, for an editorial article criticising former finance minister Tito Mboweni, resumed his testimony.
Under cross-examination by Mpofu, Sithole, an attorney, said he did not think the money spent by Mkhwebane on lawyers was fruitless and wasteful.