Faizel Patel – 16/09/2021
The Helen Suzman Foundation claims that the number of court cases lost by Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane continues to rise.
The foundations Basil Sherinda was speaking to Radio Islam on Thursday about concerns surrounding the number of cases lost by Mkhwebane and the costs to the taxpayer
In the latest case, the Supreme Court of Appeal denied her application to appeal against the overturning of her 2019 report on the early retirement granted to SARS official Ivan Pillay.
The court ruled that there was no reasonable prospect of success in an appeal.
Sherinda says Mkhwebane’s record of lost cases is concerning.
“The list is very long. We couldn’t say in summary per se, but the report that we have from the independent panel of senior counsels Dumisa Ntsebeza and Johan de Waal and the judge Nkabinde let us know that we are looking at plus minus cases of up to fifteen. That’s a lot of cases because that accumulates to more than R17 million spent on legal fees and these are cases that have been lost.”
Sherinda says the previous public protector had court rulings that every legal action was binding.
“Whenever a report is released, anyone can go to court and say that needs to be set aside. But that in itself simply means that you need now technical skills from lawyers would not make sure that whatever reports is released is good in law and that is the real problem. The problem is that right now we are getting reports that are not good in law.”
Sherinda says he does not believe that there may be a political agenda against Mkhwebane, adding that her reports are lacking in technical details.
Listen to the interview with Basil Sherinda
0 Comments