SOUTH Africa’s new government ombudsman accused her predecessor on Wednesday of misusing funds and falling under foreign influence.

Just three days into the job, new broom Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane made a series of damning claims about practices at the office vacated by Thuli Madonsela on Friday.

In her first briefing to MPs, Ms Mkhwebane said Ms Madonsela had squandered five million rand (£293,000) on consultants, including London-based PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

She also said the former public protector had taken $500,000 (£400,000) from the US Agency for International Development (USAid) — part of Washington’s global regime-change apparatus.

PWC was paid to help compile the so-called “state capture” report into the influence of the wealthy Gupta family, an interim draft of which Ms Madonsela rushed to release on Friday before a court challenge blocked it.

It controversially ignored the role of billionaire Johann Rupert, who made his fortune under apartheid, in forcing the government to reverse a cabinet reshuffle last year.

“I hit the ground running with no proper handover from my predecessor,” Ms Mkhwebane said. “She was pretty busy in her last few days, preparing for a media conference on state capture and other reports.”

Ms Mkhwebane vowed to end the use of external consultants, said that jet-setting by staff would be restricted in future and that donor funding would be rejected as harmful to her office’s independence.

“Donor funding, it’s a thing of the past, especially coming from the environment where I was working, which is not a secret,” Ms Mkhwebane continued. “I was working for the State Security Agency and I know the implications of that,” she added, apparently alluding to the widely held belief that USAid is a covert arm of US foreign policy.

National Freedom Party MP Sibusiso Mncwabe expressed shock at the USAid donation.

“For such an office with critical information to receive international donations doesn’t augur well,” he said. “This is a threat to the sovereignty of our state.”

The opposition Democratic Alliance had seized on Ms Mkhwebane’s former work in South Africa’s intelligence services to label her a “spy” — at least for her own country — and accuse her of unfitness for the role of public protector.

Ms Madonsela published her 2014 report into cost overruns on security upgrades at President Jacob Zuma’s home to the media, not parliament, mere weeks before the general election. The opposition then used it to allege corruption.