The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is suffering a haemorrhage of senior staff — including its gung-ho public face, spokesperson Sipho Ngwema, and Travelgate prosecutor Ben Avenant.
Ngwema and Avenant are among a rash of senior NPA members who have resigned in the past three months, or plan to do so soon.
Others include Rudolf Mastenbroek, former NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka’s legal right-hand man; Wayne Malgas, a Scorpions chief investigator; human resource manager Elize Roos; Scorpions training head Ruben Richards; strategic management head Ayanda Dlodlo and Scorpions project manager Prince Mofokeng.
It is understood that this month alone more than 50 employees have resigned and Ngwema is about to hand in his resignation.
This confirms that the soaring staff turnover at the elite unit — more than one in four during 2003/04 when Ngcuka first came under sustained political attack — has not stabilised.
The Scorpions’s new boss, Vusi Pikoli, will have his job cut out trying to stem the tide. The loss of experienced staff has arguably hampered the NPA’s ability to pursue complex cases.
Gareth Newham of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, said the resignations “could suggest NPA working conditions had become intolerable. There may also be a lack of staff confidence in its future.”
According to the NPA’s latest annual report, between April 2003 and March 2004 there was a 28,5% staff turnover among its 3 500 employees. The report indicates that in one senior management band four of six permanent employees have left.
Some senior resignations are from a small coterie of Ngcuka’s close associates who apparently see no future for themselves under new management. These include Ngwema, who drove the Scorpions’s publicity-seeking style, and Mastenbroek, regularly at Ngcuka’s side during the Hefer hearings.
Mastenbroek was involved in the corruption probes of former Limpopo premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi and former NPA deputy director Cornwell Tshavhungwa. Malgas investigated Tshavhungwa.
The high turnover rate, especially among senior investigators, could further delay high-profile cases. There are already concerns about delays in relation to the Travelgate scandal. It was learned this week that Avenant, the leading prosecutor in Travelgate, will leave the NPA at the end of January to join Deloitte’s forensics department.
Avenant insists his departure is a career move.
Some senior NPA officials ascribed the exodus to career considerations, while others cited demoralisation.
One senior staffer said Ngcuka’s departure last year was interpreted by some as a surrender. People were also demoralised by suggestions that the Scorpions might be absorbed by police. “Some see this as punishment.”
Jean Redpath, a criminal justice research consultant, said: “My impression is that some young people who joined the Scorpions had rather idealised impressions of what the work would be like, and were disappointed.”
Redpath also cited dissatisfaction with the NPA bureaucracy and the high salaries offered by private-sector forensic companies.
NPA spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said the reasons for the departures varied, “but none of the resignations have incapacitated the NPA in general, or the [Scorpions] in particular”.