Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane said she did not see herself in the same light as the judges.
Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane appears before the Section 194 inquiry committee on 30 March 2023. Picture: YouTube
CAPE TOWN – Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane lamented that she was being treated differently from judges for making mistakes.
Her lawyer Dali Mpofu pointed out to Mkhwebane’s impeachment inquiry that Chapter 9 institutions and the judiciary enjoy the same protection under the Constitution.
For the past eight months, Parliament’s Section 194 committee had been probing Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office as her tenure fast approached its end.
Mkhwebane said it’s unfair for judges to have labelled her as biased in her investigations when they, too, falter in the course of their work.
As her fifth day in NAIJAONPOINT seat drew to a close on Thursday, Mkhwebane said it was untrue that she sees herself on the same level as a judge.
She appealed for fairness: “They might have made a mistake. They were wrong, but they go and find against me that I was biased.”
Mkhwebane said it’s important that South Africans consider the facts of her investigations, and not only what the courts had said about her.
“I’m also not perfect. Do I have to receive such harsh treatment? Such humiliation? I don’t know.”
Her lawyer Mpofu appealed to the inquiry not to make their determination of Mkhwebane’s conduct based on the judgements against her.
“Why is the mistake of one impeachable, but the other not?”
But inquiry chairperson Richard Dyantyi assured Mkhwebane that would not be the case, adding that the inquiry would have been long over by now if it were.
Mkhwebane’s testimony is set to continue on Friday.
