Director General in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development Menzi Simelane faced a barrage of questions about his complaints against prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli at Monday’s resumption of the hearings into Pikoli’s fitness to hold office.
He was taken to task by Pikoli’s advocate, Wim Trengove, on his claim that the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions excluded the minister of justice and constitutional development in the handling of a request for help from his counterpart in Malawi.
Simelane believed the matter should have been referred to the South African Secret Service.
The Malawians had asked for the telephone and hotel records of two people they believed had tried to overthrow its government and assassinate its president.
Simelane was being cross-examined in Johannesburg in the renewed Ginwala hearings.
Trengove took Simelane through the correspondence between the South African and Malawian prosecuting authorities, which included letters referring the Malawians to the Justice Department as the appropriate authority to deal with the request.
Trengove put it to him that it was ”handled absolutely according to the book”.
”Not exactly 100%,” said Simelane, ”… it didn’t happen quite as smoothly as you said.”
He conceded that he was at a meeting where the Malawians, who had insisted on meeting Pikoli, were told that the decision on whether to help them rested with the Justice Department.
However, he said that Pikoli had indicated to him that the investigation started some time before permission to help was sought from Mabandla.
”The request was already under way before being formalised. I don’t dispute the procedure, it was the correct procedure, but the engagement had long started.”
The demographics of a team of prosecutors was another of the pertinent issues that Simelane claimed prove that Pikoli is unfit to hold office.
Simelane submitted that as the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) accounting officer, he was required to sign off on an approved expenditure.
However, he had questioned a number of memoranda from Pikoli for expenditure for travel, particularly international trips, advising Mabandla not to approve them.
”I held a different view [to Pikoli] about the size of delegations and the profile of the people to travel,” Simelane told the inquiry.
”The people didn’t represent the demographics of the country and the NPA,” he said.
He had asked that the delegation be more ”representative” and, in reaction, Pikoli wrote to Mabandla asking that he be allowed to do his job.
”I cannot be told by the director general what a scarce resource is,” Trengove read from a letter sent a year into Pikoli’s tenure.
Simelane had claimed there were six instances showing that Pikoli was not fit for the job. Besides the issue of the overseas trips, he raised the delegation of powers within the NPA, and his handling of talks on a proposed merger of the Directorate of Special Investigations (Scorpions) into the police’s special investigating unit.
Also at issue were irregularities with the DSO fund used to pay informers, the purchase of a building to accommodate prosecutors; and the merging of the corporate services of the NPA and the Justice Department.
Simelane agreed that he was not allowed to improperly interfere with the NPA. However, Trengove accused Simelane on numerous occasions of ”presumptuous interference” in areas over which he had no authority at all.
He also accused Simelane of showing deep disrespect to Pikoli by instructing the NPA head to report to him. — Sapa