{"id":229288,"date":"2022-06-20T18:56:09","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T16:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/public-protector-overstepped-her-mark-in-activist-pension-complaint-argues-treasury\/"},"modified":"2022-06-20T18:56:09","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T16:56:09","slug":"public-protector-overstepped-in-pension-complaint-argues-treasury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/public-protector-overstepped-in-pension-complaint-argues-treasury\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Protector overstepped in pension complaint, argues Treasury"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/rose_sonto-20220608-img_2008hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of Rose Sonto\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/public-protector-overstepped-in-pension-complaint-argues-treasury.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">The Public Protector ordered a review of a decision to deny a Special Pension to struggle activist Mzunani \u201cRose\u201d Sonto. Treasury says the Public Protector overstepped her authority. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">In April, the Public Protector issued a report on the termination of Mzunani \u2018Rose\u2019 Sonto\u2019s pension by the Special Pensions Appeal Board.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">The Minister of Finance and the National Treasury are seeking to have this report set aside in the Pretoria High Court, arguing that the Public Protector has overstepped her authority.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Treasury says remedial action that seeks to hold the Minister accountable for the Appeal Board\u2019s decision is \u201cmisplaced and irregular\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">The Public Protector has not indicated yet whether the action by the National Treasury will be opposed.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Minister of Finance and the National Treasury will be seeking to set aside the Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane\u2019s report on the termination of Mzunani Roseberry \u2018Rose\u2019 Sonto\u2019s Special Pension in the Pretoria High Court on 28 June.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/struggle-activist-denied-his-pension\/\">GroundUp reported<\/a> that the Public Protector had ordered that the Minister of Finance should apologise to Sonto and set up a judicial review of the Appeal Board\u2019s decision to terminate his pension. Special Pensions are administered by the Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA).<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/documents\/sonto_aff.pdf\">affidavit deposed by Director-General Dondo Mogajane<\/a>, the National Treasury is asking the court to suspend the remedial action and monitoring provisions in the Public Protector\u2019s report. Treasury says that the Public Protector has overstepped her authority.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/public-protector-overstepped-in-pension-complaint-argues-treasury.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Mogajane\u2019s affidavit describes the Public Protector\u2019s circuitous route to finding that the Minister of Finance is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the Special Pensions Appeal Board. According to Mogajane, the National Treasury was only made the focus of the report well into its writing. As such, Treasury only submitted its response to the Public Protector\u2019s section 7(9) notice (which invites implicated parties to submit evidence) on the same day as her report was released, on 29 April 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Mogajane does not seem to deny that the Appeal Board may have been mistaken in its consideration of Sonto\u2019s appeal, which was lodged well outside of the statutory 60-day period of appeal. Instead, he argues that while the Appeal Board may have acted under a mistaken belief in the extent of its powers, \u201csuch action does not amount to improper conduct or maladministration\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>As such, the remedial action that seeks to hold the Minister accountable for the Appeal Board\u2019s decision is \u201cmisplaced and irregular\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Mogajane argues that the Public Protector\u2019s finding against the decision of the Appeal Board is \u201cbeyond the remit\u201d of her office. He says that the power to review a decision of the Appeal Board is held by a court of review only.<\/p>\n<p>Mogajane is open to the possibility that the decision was incorrect or unlawful, but says that does not justify the Public Protector\u2019s finding that the Appeal Board\u2019s conduct was improper and amounted to maladministration, \u201cwhich typically refers to inefficient or dishonest administration\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Mogajane says that the Minister has no legal standing to review a decision of the Appeal Board, and lacks the authority to direct anyone to start such action \u2013 only Sonto can do that.<\/p>\n<p>The Appeal Board is an independent body, and since the Minister played no part in, and, argues Mogajane, is not responsible for the decisions, he cannot be directed to apologise for the decision.<\/p>\n<p>Mogajane also argues that if the Minister is made to implement the Public Protector\u2019s remedial action, this will be enforcing \u201can irrational and unreasonable decision\u201d. Furthermore, this would mean that anyone that is unhappy with the Appeal Board\u2019s decisions could refer the matter to the Public Protector for satisfaction, instead of the courts.<\/p>\n<p>The National Treasury is not seeking any relief against Sonto.<\/p>\n<p>GroundUp spoke to the Public Protector\u2019s spokesperson, Oupa Segalwe, who said that they received a copy of the Minister\u2019s application last week. \u201cThe institution is studying the application and a decision will be taken in due course,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/public-protector-overstepped-in-pension-complaint-argues-treasury.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Public Protector ordered a review of a decision to deny a Special Pension to struggle activist Mzunani \u201cRose\u201d Sonto. Treasury says the Public Protector overstepped her authority. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks In April, the Public Protector issued a report on the termination of Mzunani \u2018Rose\u2019 Sonto\u2019s pension by the Special Pensions Appeal Board. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-229288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/public-protector-overstepped-in-pension-complaint-argues-treasury.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}