Johannesburg - Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane does not want Richard Dyantyi, who chairs the parliamentary committee investigating her fitness to hold office, to preside over her matter.
Mkhwebane said if Dyantyi refused to recuse himself as before, the matter would urgently be escalated to court.
This is after her husband alleged that the late Tina Joemat-Pettersson, Dyantyi, and ANC chief whip Pemmy Majodina had demanded R200 000 each to make the inquiry into Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office "go away".
Mkhwebane said in the past few days, several misleading public statements had been made by Dyantyi, and repeated in the mainstream media, to the effect that she had “missed two deadlines” of the inquiry and that she was “unwilling” to engage her legal representatives in spite of the legal funding problem having been “resolved”.
She said the chairperson had also labelled the calls for his recusal following the allegations of corruption against him as “delaying tactics”.
Mkhwebane said it was necessary to set the record straight so that the public was not fed with deliberate distortions and untruths.
“The alleged ‘deadlines’ emanate from the illegally imposed new procedure that has been unilaterally introduced and imposed by the chairperson on June 9, 2023, when I appeared before the committee without any legal representation,” Mkhwebane said.
“Even then, I told the committee that I rejected the proposed new procedure. It is unheard of to conduct a fact-finding or disciplinary inquiry without oral evidence. To do so after more than 25 witnesses, all of whom gave oral evidence in public, makes a mockery of a process that is meant to be fair and reasonable. These deadlines therefore have no legal force or effect.
“In addition, the deadlines are unenforceable for being unreasonable. It has now transpired that a total of more than 1 000 written questions have been asked by the evidence leaders and the members of the DA, ANC, Freedom Front, ACDP, and GOOD parties. That means that nine of the 14 parties represented in the committee correctly elected not to participate in the farcical exercise, which has been illegally redesigned along the exact lines that were articulated by the late Joemat-Pettersson some three months before Dyantyi introduced them.
"She had stated openly that the new procedure was a product of political decisions taken from above and outside of the committee aimed at producing a pre-determined outcome, which will be rubberstamped in the National Assembly. On June 9, 2023, when the so-called new procedure was introduced, Dyantyi could indeed be seen reading from a prepared script, which must have existed even before the meeting. This therefore confirms the account given by Joemat-Pettersson, which should be alarming for any right-thinking South African or public representative," Mkhwebane said.
She said it was her intention to request that her legal representatives accept a limited brief to bring and argue the urgent application for the recusal of Dyantyi and to get the committee to deal with the involvement of a member or members of the committee in the corruption scandal and/or the death of Joemat-Pettersson.
“If Dyantyi predictably refuses to recuse himself as before, the matter will be urgently escalated to court. Previously, the court abdicated its responsibility to deal with the recusal issue and incorrectly held that the issue must be raised at the end of the inquiry.
“Thankfully, the court recognised that a different court would find differently and granted leave to appeal to the SCA. The appeal was lodged on Wednesday," she said.
When The Star reached Dyantyi, he shared two documents: a letter to Mkhwebane, dated which supports the claim he made that she missed the deadline.
The Star