Mabuyane's academic fraud case struck off roll

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has suffered a delay in its bid to pursue Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane over allegations of academic fraud.   

This after the Bhisho high court struck its case off the roll after the state attorney failed to appear in court on Tuesday.  

This left high court acting judge Sally Collet with no choice but to order the SIU to pay Mabuyane’s legal costs for hiring Adv Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.    

SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said the no-show by the state attorney is now the subject of investigation.   

Kganyago said he believed the state attorney was confused about the court date.  “The merits of the case have not been ventilated. There was a miscommunication that occurred when there was a change of attorneys on record and the court was not informed on time, which resulted in this order,” he said.

Kganyago explained that the miscommunication may have occurred as a result of the SIU changing an independent panel of lawyers which had been representing it in the matter in favour of the state attorney.

Kganyago said the SIU was forced to drop the private lawyers and appoint the state attorney after the auditor-general (AG) questioned the private lawyers' contract. 

“The issues queried by the AG was the process followed to appoint the panel of lawyers. Because there were questions, and because we are a law-abiding entity, we decided to suspend the law firm and appoint the state attorney,” said Kganyago.   

He assured that the SIU will explore all legal options, including amending the proclamation. "The investigation into the University of Fort Hare's affairs is ongoing and we will communicate the outcomes at the appropriate time,” he said.  

In June last year, Mabuyane won an urgent court interdict to prevent the SIU from investigating him in relation to allegations he registered for a Master's degree at the university fraudulently.  

He had approached the court to interdict the SIU and, secondly, to declare the investigation of the SIU unlawful and set aside.  

The court granted him the urgent interdict pending the outcomes of the second arguments dealing with the set-aside application.  

The parties were meant to argue the second part on Tuesday.

The SIU was mandated through a proclamation by President Cyril Ramaphosa to investigate allegations of academic fraud at Fort Hare's honour's programme. 

Mabuyane successfully argued through his lawyers that the SIU expanded its investigation into academic fraud at the university to focus on him.

He said the SIU could not change the scope of the president's proclamation without sending him an application for approval.   

His lawyer, Ngcukaitobi, previously told the court that the proclamation was issued to investigate academic fraud in the university's honour's programme while Mabuyane never completed an honour's degree at the institution but registered for the Master's programme via the recognition of prior learning policy. 

While SIU lawyer Halton Cheadle had previously argued that the proclamation itself specifically includes matters that are relevant to, connected with, incidental or ancillary to the matters mentioned in the schedule, Norman disagreed.  

Norman ruled the SIU had misinterpreted its authority and, although it mentioned Master's degrees and doctorates in its motivation to Ramaphosa, it never motivated for an inclusion in the proclamation.

Kganyago said the SIU has since applied to the president to have Master's programme included in the proclamation so it can pursue Mabuyane.