Breytenbach and her boss go another round
GLYNNIS Breytenbach’s boss is hitting back at the embattled prosecutor in a fight that is now set to take place in the Labour Court.
The acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Nomgcobo Jiba, will take on Breytenbach there on Tuesday.
Jiba filed a 43-page answering affidavit this week in a bid to prevent Breytenbach getting her job back as regional head of the NPA’s Specialised Commercial Crime Unit (SCCU). The latest battle follows Breytenbach’s recent acquittal on all 15 internal disciplinary charges brought against her by the authority.
In her sworn statement, Jiba says Breytenbach is under investigation by the very unit to which she wants to return. Jiba, however, refuses to say what the charges against Breytenbach are that the unit is investigating.
“I cannot reveal the contents of the investigations because the investigators are still in the process of investigating,” Jiba says in her affidavit. “What I can say is that the investigation is at a sensitive stage and should be allowed to take place unhindered in the SCCU environment without the applicant being present . . . I believe that the presence of the applicant would be undesirable in the SCCU and that it would have the potential of hampering the investigation.”
Breytenbach has lodged an urgent application in the Labour Court to prevent the NPA from removing her as the unit’s regional head and placing her in the office of the director of public prosecutions.
Breytenbach, in her affidavit, says Jiba is conducting a “witch-hunt” against her.
“I want to point out that I have just endured a yearlong inquiry into my conduct, at the end of which I was completely exonerated from any wrongdoing. Fifteen charges were brought and all were dismissed.
“Investigating new charges against me smacks of a witchhunt against me, where [Jiba] appears willing to do anything to prevent me from going back to my post and the prosecutions I was handling,” Breytenbach says.
In her affidavit, Jiba argues that the Labour Court does not have jurisdiction.
But Breytenbach’s lawyer, Gerhard Wagenaar, told the Sunday Times that the NPA was “doing everything in its power to stay out of court”.
Breytenbach maintains she was suspended because of her insistence on continuing with the prosecution of the now-suspended head of the police crime intelligence unit, Richard Mdluli.
“I submit that my current redeployment is nothing more than a continuation of this attempt to prevent me from prosecuting General Mdluli,” Breytenbach says in her affidavit.
Jiba refutes this. “I will . . . not deal with these allegations at this stage,” she says in her affidavit. “I have de- cided that I will obtain legal advice on the implications of this persistence with untruthful and unsubstantiated allegations, which continue to harm the . . . reputation of the NPA and myself.”
Jiba, who is said to have a close relationship with Mdluli, was appointed as the acting head of the NPA in December 2011.
In 2008, she helped Mdluli to get the head of the Gauteng Scorpions, Gerrie Nel,
The NPA ‘is doing everything in its power to stay out of court’
arrested in an effort to disrupt the arrest of the then police commissioner, Jackie Selebi.
The Sunday Times reported three weeks ago that investigations Breytenbach had been handling before her suspension — including the Imperial Crown Trading fraud and corruption case — had “ground to a halt”.
But Jiba said the unit had handled complex cases in Breytenbach’s absence.