Let's not humiliate Public Protector candidates - Khoza

18 August 2016

Cape Town – The chairperson for the committee in charge of finding a new public protector has called on MPs "to be nice" when eliminating candidates for the position.

The committee members were going through each of the 14 candidates on Thursday, to try and shortlist them even further.

They were hoping to reduce the list to five candidates.

"Please, let’s not humiliate those we are eliminating in the process," chairperson Dr Makhosi Khoza pleaded with MPs.

"When you are going to say you are objecting on the person from being considered, use the information based on interviews, CV and own views, as opposed to using the information from state security to disqualify someone. That was just a tool," she said before they got down to the business of elimination.

The EFF’s Floyd Shivambu said everyone who had come to the interviews had come ready to face public scrutiny.

The MPs should not have to sanitise their views, he said.

"This is so that in future, those who accept nomination should know they are going to face scrutiny. We must be as brutally honest as possible. We must not treat anyone with kid gloves. We must expose them so they know this is not a place to play, we are serious here."

This article first appeared on News24, see here.