Members of Parliament’s oversight committee on justice and constitutional development, which Madonsela’s office reports to, want her to appear before them soon to explain the remarks.
This is also to smooth the relationship between her office and Parliament, they said.
The MPs also want a transcript of the Justice Factor current affairs programme in which Madonsela appeared.
The show's host, Justice Malala, questioned Madonsela about a section of the Constitution which allows MPs to ask certain questions about cases the Public Protector is pursuing.
"That section is not an accountability section, that section is a contempt of the Public Protector section. It's actually there to protect me from contemptuous pronouncements as I'm busy with the case or at the end of the case," Madonsela said.
She went on to say that an accountability clause in the Public Protector Act gave her the power to issue a report in the manner she deemed fit.
"If the speaker of Parliament or chairperson of the National Council of Provinces wishes to have me present a report, I may be invited. It's about the findings [and] not why did I do it.
"It's improper to ambush the Public Protector, that case was outside the year under review," she told Malala while responding to a question about why she investigated a case which was deemed as a labour matter.
DA response
Democratic Alliance’s Dene Smuts admitted to not having watched the Justice Factor programme, but said she was informed about Madonsela’s comments on the show and that they were “serious”.
“From what I hear of the Justice Malala interview, I am really worried about that. I would like to ask … for a transcript.
“An assertion is made on that programme that I take very seriously and whose consequences in my view ought to be quite serious. I do think we need to see her on that matter,” said Smuts.
She said reports had started arriving at MPs offices on email from Madonsela’s office. “She is now sending us reports and that is a good indication that she probably is taking the point. I have to agree that it’s important that she formally concedes the point [though]."
Committee chairperson Luwellyn Landers said the law was pretty clear that Madonsela was answerable to the committee and that MPs could raise any matter relating to her reports.
“These are things that she’s adamant that we don’t have purview over and that’s the understanding we need to get from her, so that moving forward we have that clear understanding,” added Landers.
'Need to engage'
The ANC’s John Jeffery said there was a need to engage with her and find each other before this term is over.
Jeffery said he was raising the issue of her from a point of view of resolving the problems and not dragging them out. “We’ve got to find ways of working together, and working together on a basis of a proper and common understanding of the law,” he said.
Jeffery said the meeting with Madonsela would deal with the issues raised in the Mamiki Shai report “and the issues she [raised] on the Justice Factor” and to the Times newspaper. Shai is Madonsela’s former deputy who left the office in November last year.
Butting heads
Last month, Madonsela butted heads with members of Parliament's portfolio committee on justice and constitutional development over her office's jurisdiction.
In a heated session, MPs said Madonsela was overstepping the boundaries of what she should be investigating, but she fought back saying they had no right to question what she investigated.
Three days later her deputy Kevin Malunga wrote to the parliamentary portfolio committee, which conducts oversight over the office of the public protector, distancing himself from Madonsela's views, saying there was a certain decorum with regards to how their office should handle the institution it reports to.
"The spirit of my correspondence is that we must respect Parliament, of course, not suck up to it," Malunga said. "I have a view based on the law, section 181 (5) of the Constitution. We have to account to Parliament. We can't be a law unto ourselves," he wrote in the letter addressed to Landers.
Malunga later told the Mail and Guardian that his writing to Parliament was "an assertion of the right to differ". "There's nothing wrong in having different views," he said. "We should, in fact, have different views."
The Times newspaper later reported Madonsela as decrying "people being unreasonable, indifferent to human suffering" because they were more concerned with protecting the image of a political party or friends.
There had been attempts to get rid of her, the paper quoted her as saying. The Times said Madonsela slated the "under-handed manner" in which her staff had been manipulated for political gain.
“She said the lighting of fires ‘behind me’ in an attempt to make her lose focus had become common when she was in the middle of an investigation,” reported the paper.