Battle behind Scorpions demise

Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula shafted President Thabo Mbeki’s careful plans for the Scorpions when he announced this week in Parliament that the unit would be dissolved. Nqakula also pre-empted a parliamentary process and might have acted unconstitutionally.

Mbeki’s speech last Friday set out a compromise deal for the corruption-busting unit, which allowed Parliament to take control of the legislative process, as set out in the Constitution.

Government officials suggest Nqakula went off script because his close alliance with Mbeki has made him a lame duck and that he is looking to shore up his political future.

‘Nqakula is repositioning himself to make sure he gets seen by the [Jacob] Zuma people — it’s about survival. You will see lots of ministers doing that,” said a government official.

The Polokwane conference resolution, in which the ANC took a hard line on the Scorpions’ future, strengthened Nqakula, who has also wanted political authority over the unit.

Mbeki’s advisers crafted a nuanced plan for his national address last Friday, designed to save face and to keep the Scorpions relatively intact even if they are absorbed into the police.

He drew on the Khampepe Commission’s recommendations and promised to ‘interact with Parliament on legislation” by the end of March this year. He did not say the Scorpions would be dissolved.

Four days later Nqakula took many back-benchers by surprise when he told Parliament: ‘The best investigators from the two units will be put together, under the SAPS, as a reconstructed organised crime-fighting unit. The Scorpions, in the circumstances, will be dissolved.”

A government source sympathetic to Mbeki said that Nqakula’s phrasing had not been ‘elegant”, but added that the Scorpions had made themselves hard to defend. The source cited the Browse Mole Report on Zuma’s fund-raising and other activities, drawn up by Scorpions agents, the inadequate vetting of agents and leaks to the media about ongoing investigations.

Now the Scorpions’ battle is moving to Parliament where the ANC hard-line faction, in ascendancy post-Polokwane, wants to fast-track its dissolution by June in possible defiance of legal and constitutional imperatives.

Leading the faction is Nyami Booi, a new ANC national executive committee member and member of Parliament’s safety and security committee, who faces charges relating to Parliament’s Travelgate scandal. He mounted a frontal attack on the Scorpions this week.

Speaking as a lieutenant of the Zuma camp, he accused the unit of selective justice, of being ineffective in fighting organised crime and of abusing its powers. ‘Thus far,” he said in his speech, ‘the DSO [directorate of special operations] has shown strong relationship [sic] with the media and created market [sic] for profit-makers at the expense of individual rights and [the] image of the country”.

At the other end of the spectrum are ANC MPs, not necessarily aligned with Mbeki, who want a fair and exhaustive parliamentary process.

This grouping says it is impossible to complete the legal changes necessary by the end of June, but Booi is insistent and he has the backing of the parliamentary speaker, Baleka Mbete. Mbete has said the time frames set by the ANC are tight, but not impossible to meet.

Any changes to the Scorpions’ founding legislation must go through both houses of Parliament; a joint justice and safety and security committee must give 30 days’ notice for public participation, after which hearings must be held.

A final Bill will then be drafted and passed by the National Assembly, after which it must go to the National Council of Provinces and, finally, the president for signing.

Parliamentary observers said the problem with Nqakula’s statement was that it suggested the future of the unit is a fait accompli. ‘You can’t wipe the slate clean as the committee has other work,” said a parliamentary staffer. ‘There are normally long delays in drafting amendments.”

The chairperson of Parliament’s justice committee, Yunus Carrim, said the Scorpions Bills ‘will be processed just like any other major Bills, with public hearings in which people can have a full say.

‘Those opposed to the disbanding of the Scorpions can still offer concrete proposals on how the Scorpions should be absorbed into the SAPS in a way that ensures the fight against organised crime and corruption is strengthened.”

But Booi sees the government as the simple executor of ANC policy. He told the Mail & Guardian: ‘The ANC has spoken in its own language, now government has to deal with the practical issues.”

However, he agreed that there are several different positions within the ruling party on how to proceed on the Scorpions issue.

On Thursday President Thabo Mbeki gave further details of how this new merged unit will function.

He said it will focus on the most complicated and the most pernicious instances of organised crime, which will be referred to it by other formations in the criminal justice system.

‘This specialist unit will continue to be guided and assisted by the skills that reside among members of the National Prosecuting Authority and our intelligence services, ensuring that its operation is both prosecution and intelligence driven.”

Mbeki also undertook to release the findings of Judge Sisi Khampepe’s commission.