PUBLIC Protector Thuli Madonsela on Thursday called for "trust, common dignity and rational discourse" in the dispute over the letter her office wrote last week to President Jacob Zuma demanding answers on opulent state expenditure at his private residence in Nkandla.
Speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria, Ms Madonsela said she would seek a meeting with Mr Zuma to discuss co-operation between her office and the government. She said attacks on the integrity of her office, which she referred to as "the noise", were not coming from government as an institution.
"We are going through a difficult moment regarding the role of this office. (But) we also believe that there are opportunities for finding common ground," Ms Madonsela said at the briefing at her office.
Ms Madonsela said no problem was "insurmountable when there is a will to solve it. The starting point is to acknowledge there is a problem." She said "we cannot hope to get different results from our actions if our actions remain unchanged".
She said "those outside the state should allow the state to function".
On Tuesday, after a meeting of its national working committee, the governing African National Congress (ANC) accused her of trying to discredit its leadership, of acting "above the constitution" and of casting South Africa in a negative light.
The confrontation has shifted the focus from her concern that Mr Zuma had not adequately responded to her Nkandla report onto a debate over her alleged political intentions.
The Nkandla scandal is seen by many in the ANC as damaging to its moral standing and divisive.
The ANC was reacting to a letter Ms Madonsela wrote to Mr Zuma to remind him he had not responded appropriately to her report. This after Mr Zuma made a statement in Parliament on August 14 ostensibly in response.
The ANC "observed" that she wrote the letter on the day the Economic Freedom Fighters disrupted Parliament when its members demanded to know whether Mr Zuma would pay back the money for the upgrades to Nkandla.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said the "tight co-ordination" of the "offensive" against Mr Zuma was "interesting", because Ms Madonsela had been seen in the parliamentary precinct on the same day.
The ANC further challenged Ms Madonsela to reveal the name of the senior ANC leader who she alleged had leaked her letter to Mr Zuma to the media.
Ms Madonsela said dialogue was the only way to solve the matter. She said her intentions were to avoid going to court.
AfriForum on Thursday opened a case against Mr Mantashe and his deputy Jessie Duarte for allegedly contravening the Public Protector Act.
"The charges flow from a series of insults which were made by Mantashe and Duarte at a media conference two days back against Public Protector Thuli Madonsela," AfriForum deputy CEO Ernst Roets said.
According to sections nine and 11 of the act it was a crime to insult the public protector, he said, adding that any person found guilty could be fined R40,000 or sentenced to a year in prison.
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