Cape Town - A double-barrelled application to have the evidence leader of Parliament’s committee for Section 194 inquiry into suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office to recuse herself has failed.
Advocate Nazreen Bawa SC decided not to recuse herself and presented the committee with a written response to the allegations against her.
Following Bawa’s defence of her decision, the majority of MPs on the committee accepted it and said the application by fellow committee member Bantu Holomisa (UDM) that Bawa be removed over her conduct in a separate set of legal proceedings wasn’t substantiated by any allegation of bias or conflict of interest related to the Section 194 process.
The applications for Bawa’s recusal were lodged by Holomisa and attorney Godrich Gardee acting on behalf of Black People’s national crisis committee chairperson Chumani Maxwele.
He relied on an affidavit by Barnabus Xulu in litigation in which Bawa is acting for the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment.
In her defence, Bawa said the application for her recusal was an attempt to derail the enquiry and were “vexatious, unsubstantiated and spurious”.
She said the complainants hadn’t pointed to anything done by her during this enquiry that warranted her removal from it as evidence leader.
As it was an ordinary meeting of the committee and not a hearing, Mkhwebane and her team weren’t present during the three-hour virtual proceedings.
Twelve of the committee’s 14 members backed Bawa while two, Holomisa and the EFF’s representative on the committee, Omphile Maotwe, supported Bawa’s recusal.
The application for Bawa’s recusal was the third such request to the committee and came hot on the heels of an application from Mkhwebane, through her lawyer Dali Mpofu SC, that chairperson Qubudile Dyantyi (ANC) and committee member Kevin Mileham (DA) recuse themselves.
Mpofu’s application had cited procedural fairness, bias, and the protection of President Cyril Ramaphosa as reasons for Dyantyi and Mileham to step down from the committee.
On Monday, Dyantyi and Mileham both refused to recuse themselves and presented their reasons to the committee.