Battle lines were immediately drawn between the opposition and the African National Congress (ANC) when the ad hoc committee deciding the future of Vusi Pikoli, the national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) sacked by then president Thabo Mbeki, began its formal deliberations.
Last week the committee heard from Pikoli himself, from Frank Chikane, the director general in the president’s office, and from Minister of Justice Enver Surty.
On Tuesday the MPs on the committee started to chew over what each side had said.
But first of all Tertius Delport for the Democratic Alliance forecast (he had had a dream, he said) that the ANC were going to vote for Pikoli’s removal and the opposition would vote for his reinstatement.
Koos van der Merwe, the chief whip of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) agreed and insisted the whole thing was a joke, and that that “we are playing along as fools”.
“I with respect accuse the ANC of having taken a decision before this committee was formed,” he said.
He read from the morning paper which reported that a Durban lawyer, Muzi Mkhize, has already been tipped to take over from Pikoli, and has already started to put his team together.
He also began to complain that Mkhize had earlier been fined R10 000 (the maximum allowed) for blatant bias in a disciplinary hearing that he chaired. But he was interrupted by the co-chair of the committee, Kgoshi Mathupa Mokoena, who ruled this out of order.
The other co-chair, Oupa Monareng, accused the IFP of throwing in the towel, and giving up the debate in the committee because “it has been defeated by the power and strength of the ANC”.
The opposition then accused the co-chairs of bias.
When it came down to the actual debate over the evidence that had been given to the committee, Delport argued that there was real doubt about the legality of the terms of reference given to the Ginwala enquiry, and that Pikoli had been faced with ever-shifting goalposts, as the ground for his suspension changed from an inability to get on with the justice minister, to a score of other complaints made against him by the director general of the justice department.
Finally Chikane had told the committee the issue that decided the president to dismiss him was a lack of sensitivity to the internal security of the country.
“It is a clear afterthought,” Delport said. He added: “The president is removing a man from office, because he did his duty.”
Steven Swart from the African Christian Democratic Party complained that it was now not going to be possible for the committee to hear from the former justice minister Brigitte Mabandla, despite the fact that she had never given evidence in person to the Ginwala enquiry.
Archibold Nyambi for the ANC argued that the reason the Pikoli should go was that he refused to acknowledge any human weaknesses in himself. “If we give you a second chance, where will you improve as a person?” Nyambi said Pikoli was asked, and was unable to suggest anything.
Yunus Carrim, also for the ANC, suggested that one of the tasks of the committee would be to suggest ways in which the laws governing the office of the NDPP should be amended.
He agreed with Delport that there was much that was unsatisfactory about the establishment of the enquiry, and he also wanted to see Parliament having more say in the appointment of the national director. — I-Net Bridge