Barely a day after public protector advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane was warned to refrain from being used to fight ANC factional battles, the Freedom Front Plus has accused her of being incompetent in handling investigations against President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Mkhwebane is investigating money-laundering allegations in relation to a donation African Global Operations made to Ramaphosa's campaign for the presidency of the ANC. The party said Mkhwebane was not in a position to investigate the matter because it did not involve state funds. 

Freedom Front Plus said in a statement that “the investigation into President Cyril Ramaphosa only serves to highlight her apparent incompetence as public protector  seeing as it falls outside her mandate to investigate a charge that has nothing to do with state funds”.

‘The public protector is wasting her office's time and resources on this investigation while there are much more important cases, like the Vrede dairy project involving fraud amounting to hundreds of millions of rand, that have still not been thoroughly investigated,” read the statement.

The party said the office of the public protector was not established to investigate alleged criminal offences that did not damage a state entity.

“Alleged money laundering among private entities, thus, does not fall within her mandate. In such cases, the police service is the constitutionally appointed state organ that is responsible for investigating the alleged criminal activities.” 

The party continued to say: “The public protector's modus operandi has been riddled with errors ever since her term of office commenced and that raises a question regarding her competency to do the job properly."

This comes only a day after the SA Communist Party's first general secretary Solly Mapaila has called on Mkhwebane to refrain from being used by "rogue intelligence units" to fight ANC factional battles.

Speaking to hundreds of National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union members at a policy conference in Boksburg, on the East Rand, on Wednesday, Mapaila warned Mkhwebane not to become the "hired gun" of the fightback agenda within the ANC. - Additional reporting by Neo Goba