Former public protector Busisiwe Mkwhebane has been condemned by parliament for blaming people “predominantly of Indian descent” for her “ongoing struggle”, but I think this is a perfect opportunity for her to expose the whole thing in court.
Of course, some readers will already be confused, wondering how Mkwhebane, who was paid about R190,000 a month for almost six years to do nothing but look confused, could have any struggles at all, let alone an ongoing one.
In her defence, however, Mkhwebane has endured many struggles over the past decade.
The greatest, of course, was her famous and very public struggle to interpret the law.
In 2019, Business Day quoted Cyril Ramaphosa claiming that “the public protector has shown a grave misunderstanding of the law”, and with all due respect, when even President Phala Phala knows the law better than you, you’ve got problems.
I would have thought the people who are most responsible for Mkhwebane’s struggles are those who tried and failed to teach her the law, or perhaps those MPs who, ignoring the DA’s warnings, voted her into an office she was hilariously unfit to occupy, or perhaps whoever promised her that the EFF was definitely still a going concern.
She also immortalised herself by becoming the first head of a Chapter 9 institution to be impeached by parliament for being fantastically crap at her job, and again, when an ANC-controlled parliament says you’re too incompetent to be employed, the struggle is very real.
Aluta, however, continua, and just because she got canned it doesn’t mean that it’s been plain sailing since.
On the contrary, Mkhwebane’s move into politics — at least, formally — has been a solid step backwards, as she chose to the join the EFF just as it began to drift towards electoral irrelevance.
Even worse, as a member of Malema’s crumbling cult, she has to use Dali Mpofu to fight her legal battles, which must be a terrible form of legal PTSD, taking her straight back to those endless losses.
No, it’s a been rough few years for Mkhwebane.
But she knows who’s responsible, at least for the last couple of months: people “predominantly of Indian descent”.
I would have thought the people who are most responsible for Mkhwebane’s struggles are those who tried and failed to teach her the law, or perhaps those MPs who, ignoring the DA’s warnings, voted her into an office she was hilariously unfit to occupy, or perhaps whoever promised her that the EFF was definitely still a going concern.
Mkhwebane, however, seems clear. Which also seems to suggest an obvious course of action for her: if she really is the victim of a racist plot by South Africans of Indian heritage, then she must drag them to court.
If she is genuinely being persecuted, and not just tooting the EFF’s well-established anti-Indian dogwhistle to whip up the cult and throw up some smoke around her inadequacies, then this is a perfect opportunity to put all her evidence on the table.
If she has been maligned by the president and by the press, and cheated out of monies owed to her, and isn’t just trying to scapegoat one of South Africa’s smallest minorities for her own ineptitude, then surely this is her moment; to step up, to speak out, and to silence all her detractors once and for all.
Yes, we are ready to be shown who Busisiwe Mkhwebane really is.
Unless that’s already happened. Over and over and over again.
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