Is the public protector failing the public?

In my opinion the only chapter 9 institutions that have any credibility are the auditor-general and public protector.  About the latter, former public protector Thuli Madonsela elevated its reputation in the public’s mind that under her predecessors had withered away.

On 9 November 2016 I asked the public protector’s Cape Town office for a report on a complaint I had lain.  Despite reminders, a fruitless meeting with regional representative, Sune Griessel, when she also promised to report back by December 3, and Pretoria head office official Betty Ngobeni whom I had copied herself asking Griessel for a “briefing”, I’ve had no word and am none the wiser. 

“Why the fuss”, you may ask, “It’s early days”?  My complaint is five years old, brought on 26 January 2012. 

It concerned political pressure the Western Cape government applied on CapeNature (CN) about its predator policy following pressure and threats from agri-groups on the government and premier.  Evidence I presented included minutes of a CN board meeting attended by environment and agriculture MECs and members of agri-groups who at this meeting (and at least one a month before) were part of policy-making of “independent” CN, policy that was implemented to much protest and with no public consultation. 

Also there was evidence CN’s then chief executive, Kas Hamman, lied to the public about the circumstances around a protected Cape leopard’s trapping and euthanasia, which was done at the behest of a farmer, an action a Cape Town High Court case showed was illegal.  (I was annoyed when Cape Argus writer John Yeld wrote a panegyric of Hamman that reduced the above controversies to one sentence consigning it, in their opinion, to irrelevancy.  I don’t recall you publishing my rebuttal.)

During May 2012 the former regional representative, Ruthven Janse van Rensburg, told me the “politically sensitive” complaint had been transferred to Pretoria for “further investigation”.  That was the last I heard of it.  I thought it had been abandoned.

In November 2016 Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu advised me to take my complaint about Cape Town Stadium’s business plan to the public protector.  It was then I asked them about the status of my 2012 complaint.  My experience has been demoralising. 

According to Griessel, who initially could not find my letter, my complaint was not assigned a case number.  Officially the case does not exist.  But it was attached to the ANC’s Max Ozinsky’s existing one about the same matter as a kind of footnote.  Van Rensburg ought to have been aware of and corrected this lapse of procedure. (In 2014 he ironically took a job with the Western Cape government.)

On New Year's day I emailed Ngobeni, copying the National Assembly’s Justice and Correctional Services Portfolio Committee: “The Public Protector Act, 1994 s8.3 states: ‘The findings of an investigation by the Public Protector shall, when he or she deems it fit but as soon as possible, be made available to the complainant and to any person implicated thereby.’

“My 2012 complaint is long overdue to any reasonable interpretation, (and because you have not indicated) a finding has not been made and the investigation is still ongoing, I shall assume the PP is in contempt of the Act and just administrative and Batho Pele provisions. 

“Until proven otherwise, it's dire circumstance when the public's ‘protector’ falls prey to the same cancer of indifference and ineptitude prevalent in government that compels the public to approach the office in the first place.

“(Unless I hear otherwise) I will give up the Public Protector as a loss and tell people so.  I'll tell them – including auditor-general – the sunshine, "good story" reporting of how allegedly effective the institution is and its relevance to ordinary people who approach it for help is disingenuous and inaccurate.”