NPA must apologise - Mbeki
PRETORIA – Former President Thabo Mbeki says there was no record of a single instance when the NPA stopped prosecuting a case on account of ‘executive interference’.
Former President Thabo Mbeki said during the years he was in government he and his executive never interfered in the work of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
“The executive never prevented the prosecutors from pursuing the cases referred to the NPA by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC),” Mbeki’s office said.
Mbeki was insistent there was no executive interference, despite a 2021 Supreme Court of Appeal judgment which found, on the strength of uncontested submissions by former national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) Advocate Vusi Pikoli, that the NPA ‘investigations into the TRC cases were stopped as a result of an executive decision’ which amounted to ‘interference with the NPA’.
“I repeat, no such interference took place. If the investigations Pikoli referred to were stopped, they were stopped by the NPA and not at the behest of the government as alleged by the advocate,” Mbeki said.
There was no record of a single instance when the NPA stopped investigating and prosecuting a case on account of ‘executive interference’ - at least not during the period 1999 to 2008. He said there were questions the NPA must answer honestly.
“Who in the executive instructed the NPA not to do its work? Will the NPA publish this ‘instruction’ which, presumably, will be in its archives? Why did the NPA accept and respect what would have patently been an illegal instruction?”