Pretoria – Advocate Dali Mpofu who is representing suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane told the parliamentary committee that a senior investigator who was formerly in the public protector’s office, was an unreliable witness and was retaliating against his client because he was fired for dishonesty.
Tebogo Kekana, who was an investigator at the Office of the Public Protector, testified on Monday and made damning allegations against Mkhwebane.
He was speaking in the inquiry into the fitness of Mkhwebane to hold office.
On Tuesday, Mpofu cross examined Kekana and accused him of lying in his evidence saying he was still harbouring anger towards Mkhwebane because he was dismissed.
He added that Kekana was found guilty of disclosing confidential information sent to him in error and the chairperson of the disciplinary hearing found that there was evidence of dishonesty against him.
He accused Kekana of gossiping about Mkhwebane to lawyers and said he was the opposite of a whistle-blower.
Kekana insisted that his evidence had nothing to do with his suspension and said he was found guilty of unauthorised disclosure of information, but he was not charged with dishonesty.
In his defence, Kekana said he reported his discomfort about Mkhwebane’s conduct to an attorney and an advocate and did not consider it as gossip and the only reason he was suspended was because he raised issues of maladministration in the office through a trade union.
Mpofu continued to discredit Kekana saying he was not a whistle-blower, but, in fact, a “whistle inhaler”, because he made his disclosures about Mkhwebane as retribution against the disciplinary action taken against him.
As he was being cross examined, Kekana could not answer some questions which were on his affidavit which he wrote a couple of years ago, he said this was because some of the things happened three or five years ago.
“This is one of the reasons I did not want to testify because my memory on some of the events is impaired.
“But I answered most questions in the best of my abilities.
“If I had received more documentation from the office of the public protector, I could have assisted more,” Kekana said.
Kekana is fighting his dismissal in the Labour Court in a bid to be reinstated.
Advocate Nazreen Bawa who is the evidence leader in the proceedings said it was best to call people Kekana mentioned so that they could speak for themselves.
On Monday, during his testimony into the investigation over whether the government should have implemented the CIEX report, Kekana said when a transcript of an interview with former State Security Agency (SSA) head Billy Masetlha could not be found, a meeting was arranged with the agency where former SSA head Arthur Fraser and James Ramabulane were in attendance.
However, he said he was told that Mkhwebane held a meeting with former state security minister David Mahlobo prior to the SSA meeting.
“We found it odd for one to have a one-on-one meeting with an implicated party,” he said.
Kekana told the inquiry Mkhwebane instructed him not to record the meeting with SSA officials.
Kekana claimed the initial lead investigator in the Vrede dairy project investigation was removed because of suspected membership of the DA.
He said he was told by the lead investigator that Mkhwebane instructed that they should not use evidence from the Gupta leaks emails and not implicate politicians.
“We were forced to remove adverse findings in the report including on premier (Ace Magashule) and agriculture MEC (Mosebenzi Zwane).”
Kekana said Mkhwebane indicated that she did not care whether the Vrede dairy report was taken on review or not.
Kekana is done with his testimony and the hearing continues on Wednesday.
IOL