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Mkhwebane fails to get judgment related to CR17 campaign rescinded

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Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has failed in her bid to have the Constitutional Court rescind its judgment related her findings about a R 500 000 donation to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2017 presidential campaign.

On Wednesday, the court stuck to its guns that Mkhwebane had dishonestly changed the wording of the Executive Ethics Code in order to come to the conclusion that President Cyril Ramaphosa had deliberately misled parliament on the donation, in breach of the code.

Mkhwebane had argued that she had used a 2007 version of the code which referred to “deliberate and inadvertent” misleading, a claim dismissed by the apex court as implausible.

Judgment

In 2021, the judgment was scathing on Mkhwebane’s findings on donations made to Ramaphosa’s 2017 ANC presidential campaign.

The Constitutional Court has also found that Mkhwebane had no jurisdiction to investigate the affairs of the CR17 campaign and had overreached in her probe.

Former Democratic Alliance leader and now One South Africa Movement leader Mmusi Maimane first raised the issue in Parliament in 2018 when he asked Ramaphosa about the R500 000 donation that Bosasa had made to his campaign.

Justice Chris Jafta said Mkhwebane was wrong in her findings when she said Ramaphosa had misled Parliament when he responded to the question from Maimane.

Constitutional Court rules on Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign:

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