The battle between President Jacob Zuma and Public Protector Thuli Madonsela over the extent of her powers can only be settled in court.
Speaking hours before Zuma’s office made public a letter in which he disputed her powers, Madonsela said the question would have to be resolved by the courts.
“That’s the beauty of constitutional democracy,” she said.
Whereas in the days when Parliament trumped the constitution, President Paul Kruger’s government had been able to change the constitution to negate an adverse finding by a judge, today we were “lucky” the courts had the final say, based on their interpretation of the constitution.
Yesterday, her office said she would respond to Zuma’s letter confidentially.
This comes after a letter, in which she complained to Zuma he had failed to respond to her report on her investigation into the Nkandla debacle, was leaked to the media.
In his letter to Speaker Baleka Mbete on Thursday, Zuma said he “must respectfully disagree with your assertion that reports of the public protector ‘are by law not subject to any review or second guessing by a minister and/or cabinet’ and ‘the findings made and remedial action taken by the Public Protector can only be judicially reviewed and set aside by a court of law’.”
This was in response to Madonsela’s argument that in asking Police Minister Nathi Nhleko to decide whether he should pay anything towards the costs of the Nkandla “security upgrades”, Zuma was assigning to him the power to review her decision that the president should pay a “reasonable portion”.
Constitutional law Professor Pierre de Vos said there was room for interpretation of Madonsela’s powers as the question had not been settled in court.
While the Supreme Court of Appeal had said (in Public Protector vs the Mail & Guardian) the powers of her office were much more than those of an ombud, “we don’t know exactly how far it stretches”.
Saturday Argus