Opposition MPs’ patience with the National Prosecuting Authority appears to be wearing thin, as they lashed out at the authority’s slow pace in prosecuting crimes related to state capture and corruption.
Image: Ntswe Mokoena, GCIS.
Since the appointment of Shamila Batohi as the national director of public prosecutions, interactions between MPs who sit in parliament’s justice portfolio committee and the NPA have been cordial, with MPs largely showing leniency and understanding of the problems within the entity.
But during Thursday’s debate on the department of justice’s budget, DA MP Glynnis Breytenbach led the charge, saying justice minister Ronald Lamola had failed to live up to the promises he made when he took office last year.
“It is with a sense of immense honour that we are here today to present the budget. Part of the mandate of this budget, among others, is to fight corruption and ensure that justice is not only done, but also seen to be done,” said Lamola in delivering his maiden budget speech in July last year.
But during Thursday’s debate, Breytenbach said: “Little has come of this commitment to the rule of law.”
She said that to uphold the rule of law there has to be an independent prosecuting authority, properly resourced in every fashion, to enable effective and efficient prosecutions and to enforce accountability for breaking the law.
“This, we do not have,” she said.
Breytenbach said despite the appointment of Batohi – which the DA had applauded, and still do – they have seen slow or no progress, largely due to a woefully inadequate budget, and lack of resources, human and otherwise.
“The NPA remains bogged down in the mess left after state capture, and will never be able to function at the level required while it remains under-resourced,” she said.
Batohi has previously told the justice portfolio committee that the NPA does not have the capacity to prosecute complex state capture cases.
Breytenbach noted that the Investigative Directorate, which was established to prosecute cases from the state capture commission, is yet to prosecute a single case.
“We have seen a couple of arrests, which is encouraging, but not of any ‘big fish’. By their own admission, the Investigative Directorate have gone back to the drawing board, and don’t expect to have any prosecutions in court within the next three years.
“Bearing in mind that it has a lifespan of only five years, that will mean that they will have done no prosecutions at all,” the DA MP said.
She said all their work would simply be reabsorbed into the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit of the NPA and have to be done by other prosecutors.
“It would have been better, then, to leave them to it in the first place,” said Breytenbach.
