Mkhwebane wants Gcaleka hit with personal, punitive costs order for opposing her gratuity challenge

Impeached Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane says her successor, Kholeka Gcaleka, must be ordered to personally pay punitive legal costs for opposing her challenge to the non-payment of a R10 million gratuity.

And while Gauteng High Court in Pretoria Judge Colleen Collis did not support that demand when she found the Public Protector South Africa (PPSA) was responsible for a delay in the hearing of Mkhwebane's gratuity case, she did comply with her counsel Dali Mpofu's demand that the PPSA pay the costs of that urgent hearing on a punitive attorney-client scale.

Collis was unhappy the PPSA had yet to file the Rule 53 record of documents that underpinned its decision not to give Mkhwebane the R10 million gratuity, despite the former Public Protector demanding it do so within five days of her launching her litigation on 4 March.