Legal body reviewing request for Mkhwebane to be struck from the advocates roll

The Legal
Practice Council confirmed on Tuesday it had received a request for Public
Protector Adv Busiswe Mkhwebane to be struck off the roll of advocates
following Monday’s damning Constitutional Court judgement against her.

“Council
requests to be afforded time to review the Constitutional Court
judgement and its implications in the light of the request for a striking
off application,” the LPC’s acting executive officer Charity Nzuza wrote
in an email to Fin24.

Accountability
Now, a non-profit organisation, wrote to the LPC, which regulates the legal
profession soon after Monday’s ruling, asking them to take note of the case.

“As
you know, it is intolerable that an officer of the court should be found to be
lying on oath. Our highest court has so found in respect of Ms Mkhwebane. Her
response that the judgment of the court creates a bad precedent is contemptuous
of the court and does her no credit,” Advocate Paul Hoffman, a director of
Accountability Now, told the LPC.

The
Constitutional Court majority judgement upheld a February 2018 North Gauteng
High Court ruling that Mkhwebane pay 15% of the SA Reserve Bank’s legal fees in
the Asa/Ciex review case. Her remedial action that Absa Bank should pay back
R1.2bn for an apartheid era bailout to its subsidiary and the central bank’s
mandate should be widened, were set aside.

The apex
court found she had acted in bad faith and put forward a” number of
falsehoods” during the litigation.

Fighting
fires

Mkhwebane
is fighting fires on several fronts. The personal costs order against
her is likely to amount to hundreds of thousands of rands, according to
legal experts. The North Gauteng High Court will also use the ConCourt
judgement to decide whether she must pay out of her own pocket for the setting
aside of her report on the Estina dairy farm in May.

At the same
time, she is battling it out in court against Minister of Public Enterprises
Pravin Gordhan, who wants her adverse findings of his involvement into the
so-called South African Revenue Services ‘rogue unit’ set aside and for her to bear
the legal costs personally.

The DA, Meanwhile,
is trying to have Parliament probe her fitness to hold office for the third
time.

The LPC is
a national, statutory body established in terms of Section 4 of the Legal
Practice Act of 2014 and is “mandated to regulate the professional conduct
of legal practitioners to ensure accountability”, according to its
website.

The LPC is
relatively new and started operating in November 2018. The regulatory body
includes both advocates and attorneys for the first time and bar associations
can continue to exist as voluntary organisations.

Having high
profile officials struck off the roll of advocates has previously proven
difficult. The General Council of the Bar lost its appeal to the ConCourt in
June to have senior National Prosecuting Authority officials, Nomgcobo Jiba and
Lawrence Mrwebi removed as advocates.

The court
found then that the bar did not establish that the matter fell within its
jurisdiction. It is unclear how this will affect the new regulatory and the
complaint involving Mkhwebane.

Mkhwebane’s
CV to Parliament lists her as an advocate of the High Court and having obtained
B. Proc and LLB degrees in the early 1990s from the University of the North
(Currently the University of Limpopo).