Even ‘the pope cannot save NPA’
Candidate for top prosecuting job says authority often a political pawn
The firebrand prosecutor who helped Gerrie Nel bring down former police commissioner Jackie Selebi, and convicted murderer and former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius, has said that even the pope would not be able to save the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in its current form.
The firebrand prosecutor who helped Gerrie Nel bring down former police commissioner Jackie Selebi, and convicted murderer and former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius, has said that even the pope would not be able to save the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in its current form.
In a marathon interview of two hours and 45 minutes, deputy director of public prosecutions in Pretoria, Andrea Johnson, made it clear to the advisory panel appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to interview and compile a shortlist of names, from which he will appoint the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) that there is instability within the prosecuting authority.
Appointing the NDPP is a power vested in the president, but he has abandoned the tradition by establishing an advisory panel to shortlist the candidates. The president has until December 19 to appoint a replacement for ousted NDPP Shaun Abrahams, whose appointment was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court.
During her interview, Johnson refused to say the institution is paralysed as a whole, as there are people still doing the job the NPA is mandated to do. She later conceded that she could not argue with the assertion that there is paralysis in certain structures in the NPA and most of its management.
Johnson said when she found out a panel would be put together to conduct the interviews, she remarked to a colleague that the NPA would not even be kind to the pope, if someone like him was appointed.
“The place, as it is now, would chew the pope up and spit him out alive,” she said.
She said there was nothing wrong with how the NPA started or its structures, but what it needs is an NDPP who leads by example.
She said the biggest hurdle is getting the buy-in of top managers, adding that the deputy national directors have become complacent and formed part of factions, which a new NDPP would have to deal with.
The panel took specific interest in the Selebi case and pushed her to talk about the NPA’s decision to enter into a plea agreement with Glenn Agliotti and Clinton Nassif, in which they became section 204 witnesses. However, she stood her ground and said the panel might not agree with the decision, but it was based on facts and in law.
In terms of the current state of the NPA, Johnson said she has the perception that there is political interference with how state capture cases are and have been dealt with, as well as with the now-withdrawn charges against public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan.
Gordhan was charged with fraud by Abrahams in relation to the early retirement of the former deputy commissioner of the SA Revenue Service (Sars), Ivan Pillay. Those charges were later dropped.
“The reason I say it is political interference [is that Abrahams] goes to a meeting at Luthuli House. The very next day there is an announcement that there is a prosecution,” Johnson said, emphasising that this perception was not based on a thumb suck, but rather by knowing how cases should have been dealt with compared with what actually happened.
After Johnson indicated there had been interference in cases she had worked on, Lutendo Sigogo, representing the Black Lawyers Association of SA on the panel, said he would have expected her to resign if her objections were ignored.
“You are wrong,” Johnson said, adding that she dealt, in the main, with cases such as murder, cash-in-transit heists and robberies contact crimes that have a direct impact on South Africans. “In spite of [the interference], I stayed. I would not have allowed that. That is the easy route. If I don’t get my way, I won’t just go.”
THE PLACE [THE NATIONAL PROSECUTING AUTHORITY], AS IT IS NOW, WOULD CHEW THE POPE UP AND SPIT HIM OUT ALIVE