Busisiwe Mkhwebane says her strange Reserve Bank order, which she said was an order, wasn’t an order

Suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane says it is "mere coincidence" that one of the alleged "economic experts" she consulted over her unlawful order that Parliament amend the Reserve Bank’s mandate "happened" to work for the State Security Agency.

Mkhwebane has not called that "expert", former SSA official Maiendra Moodley as a witness in the Section 194 parliamentary inquiry into her fitness to hold office. Nor has she explained why she relied on the expertise of Holocaust denialist Stephen Goodson (who breathlessly described apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd as SA’s “greatest prime minister”) in determining that the central bank’s mandate should be amended.

Instead, and in an apparent reversal of submissions she made under oath in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, Mkhwebane has now sought to argue that her order that Parliament amend the SARB’s mandate so that it was no longer focused on protecting the value of the rand was "never intended to be prescriptive of the outcome of the proposed process".