Cape Town - The Committee for Section 194 Inquiry into suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office took a break after Thursday’s session, which ended after 8pm.
As the hearings adjourned on Thursday, committee chairperson Qubudile Dyantyi asked Parliament’s legal services to consult evidence leaders and the public protector’s legal team on how many more witnesses were expected to appear before the committee.
The legal teams were expected to report to the committee tomorrow with hearings due to resume on Wednesday.
The committee was expected to finalise its work at the end of next month. It heard the evidence of nine witnesses since the hearings began on July 12.
During that time, the committee has had only a week-long pause to give Mkhwebane and her legal team time to prepare for and participate in a Western Cape High Court action in which she sought to overturn her suspension. Judgment in the high court case was reserved.
On Thursday, advocate Nditsheni Raedani, a former senior investigator at the Office of the Public Protector of South Africa (PPSA), told the committee how Mkhwebane changed the Vrede Diary investigation report to exclude findings against Free State politicians.
Raedani, who was employed at the PPSA from October 2008 to December 2018, was involved in the Vrede Dairy investigations and claimed the draft report was amended to exclude findings of financial misconduct.
He said the September 2017 draft Vrede Dairy report had a finding of financial misconduct against the accounting officer, and the following November 2017 report did not have that finding.
Raedani said the PPSA had evidence of what former Free State premier Ace Magashule and former Free State agriculture MEC Mosebenzi Zwane had done. He recalled that there were findings against them.
Raedani referred to a meeting Mkhwebane had with Magashule where he, as the senior investigator, was allowed to sit in only briefly. He said he had found it strange that Mkhwebane closed the meeting early and met privately with Magashule.