Publication: Business Day
Issued:
Date: 2008-01-28
Reporter: Editorial
| Publication |
Business Day
|
| Date |
2008-01-28 |
|
Reporter |
Editorial |
|
Web Link |
www.bday.co.za |
It was good to see the chair of Parliament's justice
committee, Yunus Carrim *1*2, giving a clear indication that his
committee wouldn't just rubber stamp the ANC's decision to disband the
Scorpions. Even better, Carrim made it clear to the Sunday Times that the
committee would have to be convinced that any such decision would serve to
strengthen, not weaken, the fight against organised crime and corruption.
At least this promises to bring some sanity back to
the debate about the Scorpions or, to give them their proper name, the National
Prosecuting Authority's Directorate of Special Operations.
The haste with which the ANC wants the unit disbanded is quite
simply indecent. It hasn't set June deadlines for
any of the other policy interventions agreed on at Polokwane. Nor does it seem
to attach much urgency to promises that the policy thrust must become more
pro-poor. There's no rush to talk about creating jobs and cutting poverty nor,
one fears, about SA's crime problem.
Not only is the government going along with the Scorpions scheme, with the
justice ministry promising to draft the legislation in time for this
parliamentary session, but, more scandalously, the
head of the NPA, Mokotedi Mpshe, is already pre-empting it, telling Scorpions
staff the unit will not survive. The danger, of course, is that even if the
legislature does vote against disbandment, the Scorpions will have jumped ship
anyway.
Not that the Scorpions have always covered themselves in
glory *3. The Zuma case is not the only one that's
taken forever *4 to come to court. The unit has probably done itself no
favours with the high public profile it has often sought; nor has it always
handled conflicts with other law enforcement agencies in the best way. There is
much that needs to be fixed about the way they operate and the way they are
governed.
But the fact remains that the unit has had some crucial successes and that the
case for its independent existence is as strong now as it ever was. That's not
only because we need a unit that can "police the police" though the
allegations against police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who is accused among
other things of having blocked police investigations into certain big cases in
order to protect his gangster friends, surely reinforces the case for a rival
agency. Nor is the case for the Scorpions' continued existence about ensuring
there's an agency that will guard us against corruption in high places though
that's crucial, too.
The strongest case to keep the Scorpions is simply that we have a better chance
of fighting organised crime with them than we do without them. They were set up
as an independent unit precisely because they could do things the police could
not. That's still the case. Big crime is a highly complex and global business.
Uncovering and investigating it takes specialist skills and highly focused teams
of people. Because they are separate from the police, with different pay and
incentive structures, the Scorpions have been able to recruit and retain some of
those skills and to focus serious resources, for long stretches, on big
investigations. Much of this might well be lost if they were absorbed into the
police.
Their distinctive feature the model of prosecution-driven investigations
would definitely be lost, since the prosecutors could not join the police. It's
that multidisciplinary, prosecution-driven model that accounts for many of the
successes the Scorpions have had in fighting drug lords, racketeers, money
launderers and others. It would not survive the disbanding of the unit. We would
all sleep less easily in our beds at night.
That's particularly so because those who investigate big organised crime
syndicates are always particularly vulnerable to being corrupted. The South
African Police Service is a very large entity and is extremely hard to police. A
smaller, more focused and independent unit is much easier to watch.
The issues have been aired and probed at length. But Parliament must probe them
again. Ideally it will show its mettle *5 and its
independence and turf out the proposal to disband the Scorpions. SA needs more
crime-fighting agencies, and better ones, not less.
With acknowledgements to Business Day.
*1 If Yunus Carrim stands firm how
long will he remain chairman of Parliament's Justice Committee?
*2 If Yunus Carrim stands firm how long will he remain a
Member of Parliament?
*3 Not that the National Prosecuting Authority has always
covered itself in glory.
*4 Is this the fault of the DSO or the NPA.
My intuition tells me that this is the NPA, i.e. Ngcuka, Pikoli, Mpshe, etc.
They are members of the NPA, not the DSO.
*5 The moon is made of rich, creamy gorgonzola - and is just
350 000 km away.