The disbanding of the Scorpions is still only a ”proposal” and will go to Parliament and include public participation, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said in Cape Town on Tuesday.
The unit will also stay on the high-profile cases on which it is currently working, he told a media briefing on the future of the criminal justice system. ”We are going to Parliament and there’s no way in which our systems are going to be short-circuited.”
Responding to an editorial that appeared in Business Day newspaper the day after Nqakula’s announcement and which called his decision a ”disgrace”, he said the matter is still ”a proposal”.
”We want to place on the table a proposal. I never said that … this is going to happen,” he said.
The issue will be dealt with after March and will include public participation, he said.
Speaking during the debate on President Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation address last week, Nqakula had said: ”The Scorpions will be dissolved and the organised crime unit of the police will be phased out and a new amalgamated unit will be created.”
While the Khampepe commission’s report — which recommended that the Scorpions remain separate from the police — had been discussed, something ”more formidable” was wanted, the minister said. The new unit would be part of a more coordinated system and have better policing resources.
‘Nothing stupid’
Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Brigitte Mabandla was convinced that ”nothing stupid” would be done. ”I am convinced we will do nothing stupid … nothing that cannot stand the muster of the Constitution.”
The proposed changes to the criminal justice system would retain specialists and maintain an elite crime-fighting unit, but one that was ”upscaled”. The shake-up would not affect high-profile court cases such as those against police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi and African National Congress president Jacob Zuma.
”That shouldn’t happen … there will be no disturbance and no messing up of existing cases,” she said.
According to Nqakula, among problems identified in the fight against organised crime are a lack of coordination and parallel investigations. These often have different results and cause conflict in law-enforcement agencies.
”The new unit will have all the powers that currently only the DSO [Directorate of Special Operations, or the Scorpions] has and it shall only deal with complex cases that will be referred to it.”
Prosecutors would continue working with investigators, as the Scorpions had done, Nqakula said
Success rate
Nqakula would not be drawn on comparisons between the success rate of the Scorpions and the much lower one of the police. ”The Scorpions are a much smaller unit compared to the police and handle less cases. It would be unfair to make comparisons. They have done to the best of their ability the work that needed to be done.”
Asked if the police would not pull down the Scorpions and make them less effective, Nqakula said: ”We are improving the criminal justice system so that we don’t have [those] problems.”
Deputy Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Johnny de Lange said better coordination and management are needed as the criminal justice system cuts across several departments, such as correctional services and the police.
Blockages have always been handled in an ad hoc fashion and never been looked at holistically. Incompetent people also have to be removed, he said.
While the system’s new management system has not been finalised, De Lange said it would be a ”coordinating structure”, have no executive power and include judges, magistrates and the Legal Aid Board. — Sapa