When the government created the position of public protector, Oom Krisjan had all these wonderful mental images of a brave warrior brandishing his spear at miscreants, in courageous defence of the Constition. But as time went by the manne at the Dorsbult became a little concerned that perhaps too much of Selby Baqwa's cleansing efforts went into removing stains from government officials' reputations while his own armour became a little tarnished.

Nevertheless, now that his term of office has ended, Lemmer was willing to say dankie - and wish old Selby well back in private practice in piesangland. That was until the report from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group of a September 18 meeting of the justice and constitutional affairs portfolio committee arrived in the bar's mailbox.

"Matters relating to the Public Prosecutor [sic]"

"The Chair said that he had received a letter from Mr Baqwa confirming the remuneration of the Public Protector which had been approved by an Ad Hoc Committee. As he was now leaving, he was entitled to a gratuity. Part of the remuneration that had been approved was that no tax would be paid on the gratuity, however SARS had said that no contract may exclude tax. Mr Baqwa was unhappy with this. A request had been made to change the formula so that he did not have to pay tax - the amount would be changed so that the taxable amount could be included in it. The Chair had asked for the formula because they had simply used the same formula as before and multiplied it by 40, when surely it was the 40% (tax) that needed to be added to it and not multiplied. He needed to engage with the Speaker on the issue but was briefing the Committee on this upcoming issue."

This has made Lemmer rather curious as to the propriety of Selby getting an official golden banana - jammer, handshake - in addition to what the public can presume was a not ungenerous pay packet. It also puzzles the manne as to why the public protector - who should be setting a good example - is trying to weasel out of paying tax. And, more importantly, which parliamentarians decided to paper over this little tax inconvenience by increasing his gratuity by 4 000%?

Are our MPs so out of touch that they not only get Selby's position wrong, but they think the marginal tax rate is that high? How much whitewash was in his cleansing agent?

With acknowledgements to Krisjan Lemmer and Mail &Guardian.