Justice Project South Africa launches non-political campaign entitled “Hands Off our Public Protector”

Following repeated verbal and written attacks on the integrity of the office of the Public Protector and Advocate Madonsela herself, Justice Project South Africa, early this morning launched a campaign entitled “Hands Off our Public Protector” while Advocate Madonsela was being interviewed on Jacaranda’s Complimentary Breakfast.

Within minutes our tweet (and variations of it tagging other Twitter handles) had been retweeted far and wide and we are very encouraged by the public support that is already being shown for our campaign.

We are planning to hold a march to the offices of the Public Protector in Pretoria sometime in April and are currently busy with plans and arrangements to facilitate this.

“This will not be a protest as such, but more of a public show of support. We feel that the Public Protector could do with some support for the essential work that she and her office does and sending the message out to her detractors to lay off is equally important,” said JPSA’s Howard Dembovsky.

“It should also be noted that this campaign is not only in response to the Nkandla Report and there is a report on a complaint we lodged with the office of the Public Protector some time ago looming for publication in the very near future,” he said.

Dembovsky emphasised the point that the campaign was completely apolitical and that JPSA would not welcome or tolerate any participation by political parties of any description in the campaign.

We have noted that coincidentally, the Freedom Front Plus has today also launched a campaign in support of the Public Protector. We wish to point out that we were completely unaware of their plans to do so and we distance ourselves from ANY political party events, no matter what they are for.

JPSA will make an announcement with respect to the planned date and time of our march in due course, the plans for which are currently at an advanced stage.