Accountability Now (AN) Director, Paul Hoffman, says President Cyril Ramaphosa should suspend Public Protector in South Africa, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, to protect the reputation and integrity of the office.

Mkhwebane faces charges for allegedly lying under oath about the number of times she had met with former President Jacob Zuma during her investigation into the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and ABSA.

Two other charges relate to her meeting with Zuma again in June 2017 and she was alleged to have lied about the content of their discussion on that day.

‘We have asked the president to place the public protector on precautionary suspension, which is done more to protect the reputation and integrity of the office of the public protector than to find her guilty of perjury, which she may or may not be guilty of’, Eyewitness News quoted Hoffman, who laid the criminal complaint against Mkhwebane, as saying.

But Mkhwebane, in a statement, said she would cooperate with the court even though she viewed Hoffman’s request for her suspension as being typical of him and part of a smear campaign designed to get her removed.

‘It is not the first time that advocate Hoffman SC has sought to nail the public protector. In July 2019, he laid a complaint with the Legal Practise Council to have her struck off the roll of advances’, the statement read.

‘In March 2020, the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria dismissed his application for a declaratory order that the Public Protector was unfit to hold office’.

The statement added that Mkhwebane was confident she would be cleared by the court, adding that Hoffman’s charges were ‘symptomatic of a desperation to find fault’.

Source: Eyewitness News

Photo source: Public Protector SA