Cape Town - Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s legal representative at Parliament’s Section 194 inquiry, advocate Dali Mpofu, and inquiry evidence leader Nazreen Bawa on Thursday crossed swords over the issue of legal fees that were made public during evidence last week.
The fees were made public last week by PPSA Legal Services senior manager Cornelius van der Merwe’s evidence in chief, during which he said the office of the public protector had spent R147 million on legal fees in the past six years.
Van der Merwe was back before the committee on Thursday, where he was cross-examined by Mpofu.
On Wednesday, Mpofu objected to the disclosure of the legal fees paid to lawyers and said the disclosure had put lawyers and their families in danger because they might now be targeted by criminals.
He raised the matter again on Thursday in his cross-examination, causing Bawa to interject as she sought to clarify why and how the issue came up.
Defending the disclosure of the fees on Thursday, Bawa said the decision to disclose the amounts was based on the fact that money spent by the public protector’s office was “public money”.
Bawa said the evidence leaders had been asked to furnish the committee with information on the number of public protector reports that had been set aside and the detailed costs of the cases had come up in connection with this request.
Van der Merwe said Seanego Attorneys received the lion’s share of legal instructions from the public protector’s office totalling approximately R55m for services rendered from June 2018 to May 2022.
Giving further examples of monies spent, he said R213 000 was spent on a legal opinion relating to whether Mkhwebane could receive crowd-funding to pay for a personal cost order of R226 621 issued against her in the Reserve Bank case.
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court on Thursday dismissed Mkhwebane’s application for leave to appeal the setting aside of her report on an alleged rogue unit within Sars from nearly two years ago.
The sentence ruling said the appeal was refused as it had no reasonable chance of success.
The court also ordered the Office of the Public Protector to pay the legal costs of Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and former Sars executive Ivan Pillay.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za