Acting head to get the hot seat at NPA
• Abrahams’s appointment ruled ‘invalid’ • President has 90 days to choose new director
President Cyril Ramaphosa will appoint an acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on Tuesday after the Constitutional Court ruled that Shaun Abrahams’s appointment by former president Jacob Zuma was “constitutionally invalid”, the Presidency has confirmed.
According to the National Prosecuting Authority Act, the president has to appoint one of the four deputies as acting national director of public prosecutions. The current deputies are Willie Hofmeyr, Nomvula Mokhatla, Nomgcobo Jiba and Silas Ramaite.
The court has given Ramaphosa 90 days to appoint a new national director.
Speculation is rife over who will succeed Abrahams permanently. A highly placed source said former national director of prosecutions Vusi Pikoli, Western Cape director of prosecutions Rodney de Kock and former auditor-general Terence Nombembe are under consideration. However, the national director has to be an advocate, which rules out Nombembe, a chartered accountant.
Nombembe declined to say whether he has been approached.
Ramaphosa was elected to lead the ANC in December on an anticorruption ticket, central to which was ensuring that state institutions charged with pursuing politically loaded cases could act without fear or favour.
His appointment of the NPA head is critical to fulfilling those promises, which were also made to the nation in his inaugural address at the opening of parliament in February.
With the appointment of a new national director the cleanup at the NPA can begin under the new leadership.
The NPA is crucial for the functioning of the criminal justice system and needs to win back public confidence, with politically loaded cases pending, such as those linked to state capture and corruption.
Lawson Naidoo, the execu-
tive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution, which together with Freedom Under Law and Corruption Watch drove the litigation, said on Monday Ramaphosa has to appoint a director as “a matter of urgency”.
“The work of cleaning up the NPA can’t wait a day longer,” Naidoo said.
“This judgment emphasised the paralysing instability in the NPA, and the process of cleaning up has got to begin. The president needs to institute the inquiries into the fitness of Jiba and [Lawrence] Mrwebi to hold office, so that whoever comes in as the new national director doesn’t have that mess to deal with,” he said.
Jiba and Mrwebi, the head of the specialised commercial crimes unit, provided reasons to Ramaphosa on Friday as to why they should not be suspended pending an inquiry into their fitness to hold office.
Khusela Diko, Ramaphosa’s spokeswoman, said on Monday that the presidency in studying the judgment was cognisant of the order directing the president to appoint a national director within 90 days.
“In studying this judgment, the presidency is guided by the undertaking given by President Cyril Ramaphosa in the February 2018 state of the nation address that SA’s law enforcement institutions would be strengthened and shielded from external interference or manipulation,” she said.
Nicole Fritz from Freedom Under Law said the judgment did not guarantee that the NPA would be fully restored to integrity, “but it absolutely provides a launching pad for that”.