The EFF has issued a media statement containing a scurrilous attack on the efforts of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to beef up its anticorruption capacity by recruiting the Zondo commission evidence leader, Paul Pretorius, to work on the necessary (and overdue) follow-up on the findings of that commission.

Nobody is better placed than Pretorius to convert the prima facie findings and the recommendations of the commission into the proof beyond a reasonable doubt that is required to secure successful prosecutions of those fingered as corrupt because of the work done by the commission. A commission which would not have seen the light of day had then public protector Thuli Madonsela not insisted on it.

Given the history of unfinished business in the discontinued On Point Engineering prosecution, which has lain fallow for years after the postponement of the criminal trial against Julius Malema and others after one of the accused fell ill, and the work of investigative journalists on the involvement of EFF leaders in the VBS Mutual Bank scandal, the EFF’s attack is remarkably misplaced.

Pretorius has a long and unblemished track record as a faithful servant of the rule of law; nobody is better placed to advise on beefing up the capacity of the state to counter the corrupt.

It is not the fault of the NPA that SA’s politicians have not yet properly implemented the decision of the Constitutional Court that anticorruption functions must be in the hands of “a body outside executive control”. Were that the case, no rubber-stamping of the recruitment of Pretorius by the minister of justice would be required, and not a moment too soon.

Paul Hoffman SC
Director, Accountability Now