Promising little

WE EXPECTED much of new National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) boss Shaun Abrahams when he was appointed two months ago. He’d been proud of his high-profile successes, including the case against Nigerian terror suspect Henry Okah.

Abrahams sagely told a reporter upon his appointment that all his cases had had different lessons for him. And so he entered the contested South African judicial space as a top prosecutor whose independence was seemingly unchallenged.

Yet we find the decision to drop perjury and fraud charges against deputy national director of public prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba perplexing. It’s also disappointing because we had expected so much. Indeed, Abrahams – who said the decision was made by the regional head of the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit – promised so much.

That a junior made the decision is, in itself, concerning. Jiba is still being pursued by the Bar Council, which wants her struck from the roll.

Abrahams’s first high-profile intervention in his job now feels like it is following an all-too familiar, and highly disconcerting, trajectory, as far as the NPA is concerned. It plunges a critical weapon in the fight against crime into more disarray.

For justice to work, it must be seen to work. And the case of Jiba doesn’t feel like justice.