‘All we can do is learn from it’ – public protector’s office on CR17 ruling
The Office of the Public Protector says it will take the scathing Constitutional Court ruling handed down on Thursday against Busiswe Mkhwebane “as a lesson”.
Mkhwebane suffered another legal setback when the apex court upheld an earlier high court ruling.
The High Court in Pretoria set aside her report which found that President Cyril Ramaphosa had willfully misled Parliament regarding an R500 000 donation by African Global Operations, previously Bosasa, into his 2017 ANC presidential campaign.
The court said Mkhwebane was wrong in law and facts when she made her findings.
"The issues that were before the court in terms of this report are issues that are novel, and it is no surprise that the court was split into a minority and majority judgment,” says Muntu Sithole, Manager of Legal Services at the Office of the Public Protector.
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“It's issued that involve interpretation of the law and if you have judges split on one interpretation then clearly the public protector was correct in interpreting the law the way she did.”
Muntu says the Chapter 9 institution will draw several lessons from the ruling.
“The public protector investigates over 4000 complaints and therefore this cannot be looked at as a setback to the entire investigations that are ongoing. It's also important for how the office should conduct investigations going forward, unfortunately, this is a judgment of the Constitutional Court so we cannot appeal it, all we can do is to learn from it.”
