Christmas is coming. By my reckoning (well the reckonings of people I've asked) President Cyril Ramaphosa has until the week after next at the latest to appoint a new national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) to run the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
We all groaned at the time but, fortunately, Ramaphosa had the foresight to cobble together a group of representative brains to compile a shortlist of names, interview them and forward him three names. He would choose one and, he let it be known, he would prefer it to be a woman.
It means that when he does name a new NPA leader it'll be very difficult to accuse him of being factional. And judging by the original interview shortlist, he'll have two fiery and independent women to choose from.
Top of the list surely has to be Andrea Johnson, a woman top crime reporter Mandy Wiener recently described as a “petite, fiery prosecutor ... regarded by her colleagues as highly principled”. Raised on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, she started prosecuting in Alberton, of all places. In 1999, Weiner reports, she was one of the first prosecutors assigned to the now (sadly) defunct Scorpions. She worked with Gerrie Nel and on the team that successfully prosecuted former SA Police Service commissioner Jackie Selebi. Nice.
The other woman most likely on the final list is Shamila Batohi. She led the prosecution against Hansie Cronje at the King commission and was part of a team Nelson Mandela established to investigate apartheid hit squads. Since 2009 she’s been a senior adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, so she has a clean record through the Zuma years.
What's taking Ramaphosa so long, you might ask. It has to be the terms on which his chosen NDPP takes the job. No-one in their right mind, for instance, would just walk into Jacob Zuma’s twisted and distorted NPA tomorrow and expect to just get on with the job. The place is littered with Zuma toxins, not least the four deputy NDPPs, all of whom will need to be relocated. Only the president can remove a deputy NDPP and we can assume that’s being worked on. Barely two weeks, max, to go.
And if you’ve been paying attention, you can see the institutional space for the Zuma lot to mess around in closing every day. Tom Moyane’s direct “appeal” to the Constitutional Court against his sacking as head of the SA Revenue Service just got dismissed.
EFF leader Julius Malema may have insulted all and sundry outside the state capture commission the other day, but that did not stop it taking evidence and nor did it stop Ramaphosa coming to the defence, robustly, of public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan a few days later.
Gordhan, the subject of dreadful slanders by Malema, has now laid charges of crimen injuria against the EFF leader. And having faced similar charges myself years ago when I was editor of the Financial Mail, I can assure you they’re no fun. I sat in the dock for three days before getting off on a technicality, and we hadn’t printed anything remotely as libellous as what Malema has said about Gordhan.
If the cops don’t charge Malema, Gordhan could easily bring them in a private prosecution. Half the country would help him fund it. The punishment would be the same, and with a criminal record goes the parliamentary salary. A minor bagatelle, no doubt, but tut tut nonetheless.
Malema has responded with a raft of charges against Gordhan. They are so outlandish and so obviously trumped up, cynical and designed to distract they will get absolutely nowhere. And it may be loo late to apologise. Mitigation, to be meaningful in circumstances like this, has to be quick and sincere and public and very loud and humiliating. Not going to happen, surely?
And why distract? Well the evidence that Malema and his amanuensis, Floyd Shivambu, have lived off the proceeds of crimes committed at VBS Mutual Bank is beginning to look pretty damning. Daily Maverick reporter Pauli van Wyk seems to have landed in a mountain of VBS bank statements to companies controlled by Malema and Shivambu. Join the dots. Money leaves VBS and ends up refurbishing a swimming pool at a house Malema uses?
And remember, the official report into VBS was damning enough in itself. This is going to be easy. It all comes together as at least two inscrutable prosecutors line up for the top job at the NPA. Not only would neither woman take any nonsense from the EFF, they would not from the president either. There’s already a really good guy, Godfrey Lebeya, at the top of the Hawks, waiting for some leadership at the NPA.
He’s about to get it. And so are we. And not even Ramaphosa, surely, can be intimidated into appointing a patsy. Like I say, Christmas is coming.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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