Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane is embroiled in yet another scandal. This time she has appointed a new chief executive officer, a man who has still not been cleared of allegations of misconduct from his previous job at the land reform department.
That’s not the real scandal, though. The real outrage is that no action has yet been taken against Mkhwebane, two weeks after she told the justice portfolio committee in parliament that the State Security Agency had a hand in the operational affairs of her office.
What is the secret service doing in the public protector’s office?
Nearly half of all Gauteng citizens want a provincial population influx-control system implemented to stop their fellow South Africans from moving into the province.
A study by the Gauteng Region Observatory – which surveyed 30,000 people – showed that black and coloured Gauteng residents were most opposed to more people migrating to the province.
And, of those who are against the influx of South Africans into Gauteng, 41% (12,300) were people who had themselves relocated to Gauteng from other provinces for better opportunities.
The survey forms part of the observatory’s Quality of Life study which is conducted every two years.
The observatory is a research thinktank developed through a partnership between the University of Johannesburg, Wits University, the Gauteng Provincial government and the South African Local Government Association.
Two Consumer Protection Act words cause endless problems for those of us who are tasked with investigating or mediating consumer disputes: “reasonable” and “timely”.
Consumers can cancel contracts with a month’s notice and service providers must refund them, minus a “reasonable” cancellation penalty. So one gym company thinks it’s reasonable to charge its members a penalty of 30% of remaining subscriptions if they cancel before the contract term is up; another thinks it’s reasonable to make that penalty 70%.
“Timely” is even more problematic.
Section 54 states: “When a supplier undertakes to perform any services for a consumer, the consumer has a right to the timely performance of those services, and timely notice of any unavoidable delay in the performance of the services.”
