Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane
- Earlier this month, the ConCourt dismissed Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s application for a rescission of its ruling that all but one of the parliamentary rules governing a long-awaited inquiry into her fitness to hold office were lawful.
- Mkhwebane argued that the inquiry should not proceed until investigations into consultant Ismail Abramjee’s text to Parliament’s advocate Andrew Breitenbach SC are finalised.
- She has now revealed that a preliminary Public Protector investigation showed that there were 18 calls between “the number from which the controversial SMS to Adv. Breitenbach was made and the one registered under the name Narandran Kollapen”.
Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane says a preliminary investigation into Ismail Abramjee’s text message claiming to have it “on good authority” that the Constitutional Court would dismiss her rescission case, revealed 18 calls between him and Justice Jody Kollapen.
“These calls were exchanged between 4 January 2022 and 22 April 2022, two days before Adv. [Andrew] Breitenbach SC received the controversial SMS. The shortest call lasted three seconds while the longest took 436 seconds or just over seven minutes,” Mkhwebane said.
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Speaking to News24 after Mkhwebane’s announcement on Tuesday afternoon, Abramjee denied that there was anything untoward about these calls, adding that they were primarily concerned with a celebratory event that he had hosted for Kollapen on 4 March this year.
He confirmed that Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo had called him on that day to ask for directions to the event.
Mkhwebane said cellphone records revealed contact between Abramjee and a number reasonably suspected to be issued to or used by Mlambo on that day.
Abramjee added that he and Kollapen had served on the Pretoria Legacy Foundation together “and we talk a lot, but we don’t discuss his work”.
That does not seem to have persuaded Mkhwebane, who on Tuesday found that “the preliminary investigation [into the Abramjee text] has proven that the nature of this complaint invariably stretches to the judicial arena”.
“Furthermore, the complaint carries all the hallmarks of criminality and nefarious motives by Mr Abramjee and his accomplice(s). Consequently, the complaint may not be executed fully within the mandate of the Public Protector, without bringing it to the attention or notice of the Judicial Service Commission [JSC], the South African Police Service and the DPCI [Hawks].”
She closed the text message investigation, after referring the matter to both the JSC and the Hawks.
Last month, Mkhwebane sought to persuade the Western Cape High Court to halt Parliament proceeding with an inquiry into her fitness to hold office, and to interdict President Cyril Ramaphosa from suspending her, pending the outcome of her rescission application in the Constitutional Court, in which she again tried to challenge the legality of the inquiry’s rules.
In his text message to Breitenbach, Abramjee claimed that he had it “on very good authority that the ConCourt has declined to hear the Public Protector’s rescission application”.
He further stated that the Constitutional Court’s decision to decline Mkhwebane’s rescission application “will be made known sometime this coming week but not later than Friday. I thought I’d just share this with you on a strictly confidential basis. Thanks”.
Mkhwebane revealed on Tuesday that this was not the only text message that Abramjee had sent Breitenbach.
She said he had sent two others, including one sent on 21 August 2021 at 21:48 that related to her challenge to the rules governing the impeachment inquiry against her.
That message read:
Hello Adv Breitenbach. My name is Ismail Abramjee from Pretoria.Re: Parliamentary appeal on PP rules: I was speaking to a judge colleague about your matter pending appeal and the following discussion ensued. I am not certain if you are aware of the Act. The Law Reform Commission Act requires that the chairperson of the commission be a High Court judge. However, when the judge sits and chairs the commission’s meetings, he does not do so as a judge but merely as a chairperson of the commission.I thought that this snippet of information may just assist you in your case against the public protector. Regards.
Mkhwebane pointed out that Kollapen “is the Chairperson of the SALRC”.
“The cumulative weight of this evidence as highlighted in the SMSes sent to Adv Breitenbach by Mr Abramjee, the frequency of telecommunication or close association between Mr Abramjee and the judicial officers, are all sufficient to lay a foundation of a belief upon which to invoke section 14(1) of the Judicial Service Commission Act,” she said.
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