While senior police give evidence of political interference in their work, it does not behove the acting minister of police to call for the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (Nacac) recommendations by government as a cure-all for the sorry state of the fight against corruption in SA.

Nacac’s recommendations preserve the structural and operational milieu in which political interference in the work of the police against corruption is baked into the system. What is in fact needed, and will hopefully emerge from the work of the Madlanga commission, is greater fealty to the rule of law in the form of the proper implementation of the rulings given by the Constitutional Court in the Glenister litigation.

The notion that our law demands a body outside executive control to deal effectively with the corrupt who are destroying the social fabric of SA is the law of the land; the court rulings are binding on government.

The court went further to determine that a single specialist body is needed, populated by specialists who are properly trained, housed in an entity that is operationally and structurally independent, with guaranteed resources and secure tenure of office. These requirements are known as the Stirs criteria, which are conspicuously absent in SA.

A body of this kind is, however, contemplated by the bills pending in parliament, which envisage the establishment of a new chapter 9 anticorruption entity, a constitutionally compliant solution to the problem that by far eclipses any of the Nacac recommendations. No such body is envisaged by Nacac, and to the everlasting shame of parliament it has not yet been legislated into existence.

Paul Hoffman

Director, Accountability Now