Policy think tank the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) on Thursday expressed disappointment with the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA’s) performance, calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to urgently appoint a retired judge to conduct an enquiry into the NPA and its leadership, performance, structure and independence.

Speaking at the launch of the organisation’s report ‘ACTION FIVE: Energise the NPA’, CDE executive director Ann Bernstein said the proposed enquiry was not a formal commission of enquiry but rather one to make recommendations to Ramaphosa, Justice Minister Thembi Simelane and her Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, within eight months.

Bernstein explained that the NPA had been seriously weakened by political interference over the years, noting that the lowest point was during Jacob Zuma’s Presidency, when he appointed Shaun Abrahams to replace Mxolisi Nxasana as National Director of Public Prosecutions in 2015.

“The disappointing performance of the NPA has failed to deter the spread of corruption, has created disillusion with government’s commitment to upholding justice, and has diminished State capacity,” Bernstein explained.

She said the goal of the proposed commission should be to identify the specific causes of the NPA’s lack of performance and to recommend remedial action.

She said where allegations against the organisation, the leadership and officials within the NPA were investigated and found to be untrue, it was important to emphasise this, as these “repeated allegations undermine the legitimacy and work of the NPA”.

She explained that the disappointing performance of the NPA had encouraged impunity among criminals and had failed to deter the spread of corruption, which had also led to a pervasive sense of despair that the State could not enforce the law.  

RECORDS OF PROSECUTIONS

Bernstein said there was a self-evident need to restore accountability.

“To do this, we need a clear understanding of the reasons for the failure of the NPA, the most evident of which is its poor record in prosecuting (much less securing convictions) in most of the major corruption cases it has been investigating. We can then consider the remedies to get the NPA back on track,” she said.

Bernstein noted the “slow and erratic” prosecution of widely reported cases of corruption, which she said undermined democracy and encouraged the misappropriation of State resources and diminished the capacity of the State to deliver on its obligations.

“To further speed up the process of getting major corruption cases to court, the Minister of Justice must request the Chief Justice and the Judge Presidents of the High Courts to set up special corruption courts,” she suggested.

The CDE also called on Ramaphosa, Simelane and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to publicly support the NPA and endorse its investigations and prosecutions of those charged with priority crimes, even if those charged were powerful people.

“...they should do this on an ongoing basis so as to remind the public (and the NPA) of their unconditional support for the vital work of the NPA in dealing with corruption,” said Bernstein.

She highlighted that to strengthen its capacity, the NPA should enter public-private partnerships with “transparent, independent and temporary” entities, which she said would facilitate increased cooperation between the NPA and private practitioners in prosecutions of priority corruption cases.

Bernstein said the Government of National Unity must significantly increase the funding available to the NPA, also urging Simelane to immediately issue an instruction to her department to release the full archive of the Zondo Commission, including its witness statements and investigation materials, so that it was available to the NPA.