The National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi on Thursday labelled calls for his resignation as an ”elaborate plan” to discredit him and the NPA.
”I do not wish to dignify Cosatu’s [the Congress of South African Trade Unions] demand for my resignation with any response,” he said in a media release.
”I am of the view that their call is, at best, informed by their ignorance of the facts or, at worst, an elaborate plan on their part to discredit me and, indirectly, the NPA.”
Cosatu in KwaZulu-Natal has been calling for Nkosi’s resignation, claiming that he had lied to the nation on November 12 last year when he said that the NPA would be ready to proceed with its case against former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
It has threatened to force him to resign by staging pickets outside NPA offices.
Nkosi denied having lied. ”I wish to state for the record that my statement issued on Saturday November 12 2005 in Durban was correct.”
He said that the NPA believed that it would be ready to proceed with Zuma’s corruption trial, but that after he had issued the statement, ”circumstances beyond its [the NPA’s] control were rendering it unable to proceed with the trial on the agreed date [July 31 2006]”.
He also hit out at the media for publishing Cosatu’s claims. ”Despite Cosatu’s constant failure to substantiate the allegation that I lied to the nation, some sections of the media are continuing to publish the labour federation’s libellous statements against me.” — Sapa