During the course of a wide-ranging 27 minute interview with Newsroom Afrika, national director of public prosecutions Shamila Batohi insisted that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) was independent.

She couldn’t be more wrong. The concept of “independence” is rather like pregnancy: no constitutionally created body can be a little independent; it is either independent or not.

The NPA, a creature of chapter eight of the constitution, is operated as a programme within the department of justice. The minister of justice has “final responsibility over” the NPA and its accounting officer is the director-general of justice. The minister must concur in prosecution policy. These features point away from the claimed independence of the NPA.

Apart from these structural constitutional restraints, the operations of the NPA are influenced by the politics of the day. For example, all attempts to have former police minister Bheki Cele charged for his proven role in the irregular 2010 Fifa World Cup soccer leases for police headquarters in Pretoria and Durban have come to nought. The NPA even had the gall to refer the investigation to the Hawks, a police body, expecting the Hawks to investigate their minister on serious corruption charges. It is no surprise that nothing has come of the complaint.

Infiltration of the NPA by saboteurs intent on protecting the corrupt has been publicly discussed since the days of Hermione Cronje, which ended in March 2022. Now the department of justice is keeping the record of the Zondo state capture commission away from the NPA, despite the relevance of that record to the investigations recommended in the report. This blocking activity is further evidence of executive interference in the work of the NPA.

Paul Hoffman
Director, Accountability Now