President Cyril Ramaphosa is on course to meet a mid-December deadline imposed by the Constitutional Court to appoint the country’s top prosecutor.
On Sunday, an advisory panel appointed by Ramaphosa gave the president its shortlist of five candidates from which to choose the national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) to succeed Shaun Abrahams, who was axed in August.
Eleven candidates were interviewed. Ramaphosa has until December 19 to make the appointment.
Advocates Shamila Batohi, Siyabulela Mapoma, Simphiwe Mlotshwa, Rodney de Kock and Andrea Johnson are the contenders for the post. Interviews were conducted in Pretoria.
The successful candidate will lead the charge to stabilise the prosecuting authority, which was described during the interviews as highly fractured and riven by divisions over political interference in its work.
It is the first time since the unit’s establishment in 1998 that the NDPP will be appointed through a transparent process. The constitution gives the president the prerogative to make
the appointment.
Not one of the former NDPPs has completed a full 10-year term in office since the establishment of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
The shortlisted candidates are all prosecutors who have previously worked at the agency and shown commitment to act independently, often at great cost to themselves.
Batohi and Johnson are tipped as the favourites, not only because of the presidency’s stated commitment to see more women leading in the legal sphere but also because of their clear aptitude and resilience.
Presidency spokesperson Khusela Diko said the candidates would now have to be vetted for security clearances, while qualifications and the candidates’ right to practice would have to be checked as well.
"The president has not yet made a decision on a possible appointment," Diko said.
During her interview, Johnson spoke candidly about how she was removed as the acting head of the Priority Crimes Litigation Unit (PCLU), which was later responsible for the hastily aborted fraud prosecution of Pravin Gordhan. She said she had been removed because "they would not have been able to do the work they thought they could do at PCLU if I was there".
After Johnson was removed, former Hawks KwaZulu-Natal boss Johan Booysen, former SA Revenue Service commissioner Ivan Pillay and former Hawks head Anwa Dramat were all charged in questionable circumstances. The case against Dramat was withdrawn, and the NPA is defending the lawfulness of the Pillay and Booysen cases in court.
Mlotshwa suffered the consequences when he refused to bow to pressure to drop a
fraud and corruption case involving ANC and government officials and Uruguayan businessman Gaston Savoi.
During his interview, he described how former acting NPA head Nomgcobo Jiba, soon to be the subject of an inquiry into her fitness to hold office, put him under pressure to drop charges in the so-called "Amigos" case. He was removed as the acting KwaZulu-Natal prosecutions head in 2012.
Batohi is a senior legal adviser at the International Criminal Court. She described taking up the position of NDPP as akin to jumping into a shark tank. She said the NPA Act made provision for investigations directorates, such as the defunct Scorpions, and said the NPA should have an investigating directorate dealing with corruption.
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