Parliament on Tuesday ratified Vusi Pikoli’s dismissal as national director of public prosecutions, but he immediately hit back with a legal bid to be reinstated.
The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) voted in favour of a report by a parliamentary committee that approved his dismissal by President Kgalema Motlanthe, days after the National Assembly did so.
Within minutes of the vote, Pikoli moved to challenge the decision in court and ask that he be reinstated as head of the National Prosecuting Authority.
His legal team said they were petitioning the Pretoria High Court to set aside the dismissal on the grounds that it was not rational and violated the constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence and the principles of legality.
”The papers have been signed and there is somebody driving to Pretoria,” said Pikoli’s attorney Aslam Moosajee.
Pikoli maintains that he was suspended by former president Thabo Mbeki in September 2007 in a bid to stop the prosecution of now suspended police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi for corruption.
But in a charged debate in the NCOP, African National Congress members argued that Motlanthe had no choice but to fire him for being insensitive to national security issues.
Khosi Mokoena, who co-chaired the ad hoc review committee, told the legislature that he was rightly dismissed for overruling Mbeki’s concerns that arresting Selebi could destabilise South Africa.
”Even after the president requested two weeks to make the necessary arrangements … Advocate Pikoli refused and told the president he was giving him only seven days.
”This attitude shows a lack of respect for the president’s constitutional duty to maintain national security and stability,” he said.
”It will be in the best interest of the country and even of Advocate Pikoli to remove him from the sensitive position of national director of public prosecutions.”
‘Pikoli must be reinstated’
The opposition protested that Pikoli’s integrity was beyond doubt and that he must be reinstated in line with the recommendations of the Ginwala Inquiry, which found late last year that he was fit for office.
Motlanthe declined to do so, citing secondary remarks in Ginwala’s report that Pikoli may have undermined national security as grounds for the dismissal.
The Democratic Alliance’s Wilhelm le Roux said the ANC had been ”brutal” in their treatment of one of the party’s ”finest members”, while rewarding the unethical behaviour of members like Carl Niehaus, who has admitted to resorting to fraud to cover spiralling private debt.
”Pikoli had no such luck but was humiliated and suspended,” Le Roux said.
Motlanthe is now in a position to appoint a new prosecutions director, who will inherit responsibility for the protracted, politically fraught corruption case against Zuma. But Pikoli has warned the president not to appoint a successor while he fights for his job in court. — Sapa