Busi response expected today
Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane said yesterday she was preparing to respond to court papers on an urgent application brought by President Cyril Ramaphosa over her remedial action on a South African Revenue Service (Sars) pension payment to its former commissioner.
Mkhwebane’s office was expected to file responding papers during the course of the day.
Her remarks follow an urgent court application by Ramaphosa on Monday, seeking a declaration from court that he complied with the public protector’s remedial action against Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan on a matter that involves an early retirement payment to former Sars commissioner Ivan Pillay.
In her report released in May, Mkhwebane found Gordhan to have acted inappropriately during his time as finance minister when he approved the early retirement payout to Pillay.
She recommended that Ramaphosa take disciplinary action against Gordhan within 30 days.
At the end of that period, Mkhwebane wrote to Ramaphosa and accused him of being in contempt of the office of the public protector for his failure to take action against Gordhan.
On Monday, Ramaphosa filed an urgent application seeking a court declaration that he has complied with the public protector by noting Mkhwebane’s report and the review application by Gordhan on this matter.
Speaking from Bhisho, Mkhwebane said: “We are studying the court papers, because it’s an urgent matter. We should be responding today.”
Mkhwebane said no court interdict was lodged against her report on the pension matter, as was the case with her recent findings against Gordhan on the Sars rogue unit and the complaint of misleading parliament.
“We issue the report for the president to act on and it is supposed to be the affected minister who interdicts the implementation of remedial action. We explained to the president he was supposed to act because there was no interdict against that report, as Minister Gordhan is doing now with the report on the Sars rogue unit,” she said. – ANA