Enormous legal bill could leave public protector’s office exceeding budget, senior manager says

The office of the public protector’s legal services could exceed its annual budget of about R14.7m allocated for the 2022/23 financial year.

This was revealed by the senior manager for legal services in the public protector's office, Neels van der Merwe, who appeared on Wednesday before the parliamentary committee probing suspended public protector advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office.

Van der Merwe earlier told the committee of the enormous legal services bill of the office of the public protector, which he said had been increasing over the past six years.

Most of the money went to law firms that were either appointed to give legal opinions or represent the office in numerous cases it had in court over the years. Some of the cases included review applications. 

According to Van der Merwe, the annual budget for legal services for the 2022/23 financial year was R14.726m. He said an additional amount of R1.5m had been allocated for labour matters.

“In a report by [head of legal services] Mr [Muntu] Sithole provided to the leadership recently in July 2022, it reflected that there were nine litigious matters being opposed where external representation [attorneys and counsel] was engaged. There was a number that were opposed, but internally,” he said in his affidavit submitted to the committee.

Meanwhile, the DA’s shadow minister of justice and constitutional development Glynnis Breytenbach said her party would write to acting public protector Kholeka Gcaleka to request a full audit on all funds spent by the public protector's office to defend Mkhwebane in court and the media.

“It should be determined if any of this expenditure was inappropriate — and if so, the repayment of these funds should be sought from Mkhwebane,” Breytenbach said in a statement.

“The office of the public protector is central to our constitutional framework. All funds spent by the institution must be in furtherance of its core mandate.

“Should any expenditure be found to have been inappropriately spent by the office to further personal agendas of the public protector, every effort should be made to recoup these costs from the suspended public protector directly.”

The payments listed by Breytenbach include:

• Advocate Dali Mpofu SC earned about R12m in briefs from Seanego Attorneys.
• The public protector spent about R147m in legal fees over the past six years.
• The public protector’s office spent about R4m defending her CR17 report, R3.4m defending her Estina dairy report, and R15m on litigation against minister Pravin Gordhan. Each one of these matters, with a total value of about R22.4m, was defeated in court.
• The payment of about R120,000 for a media campaign allegedly to rehabilitate the public protector’s image and criticise the courts that ruled against her.

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