Former NPA head denies role in missing Cradock Four docket

Former acting National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Nomgcobo Jiba has denied instructing the unit that handled prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes to hand over the Cradock Four murder docket to her office.

Former deputy director of public prosecutions Chris MacAdam, in an affidavit in 2021 before the high court in Pretoria, stated the docket was collected from his office to that of the national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) in April 2013. It has not been found since.

Although Jiba was not mentioned by name in MacAdam’s affidavit, the timeline referred to concerning the docket of the 1985 murders of anti-apartheid activists Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto was during her acting tenure.

Jiba took the witness box on Wednesday for the first time to defend herself at the commission of inquiry investigating allegations of political interference in the investigations and prosecution of Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)-related cases.

“I have never asked for a docket,” Jiba said.

The missing docket has been a contentious issue for the NPA because no-one has been arrested 41 years after the killings. Hermanus Barend du Plessis, identified by the Foundation for Human Rights as a key suspect in the murders, died in May 2023.

Jiba said MacAdam’s affidavit was using her as a “scapegoat” for poor handling of the TRC cases by the NPA’s priority crimes litigation unit.

“Dockets are very important; you do not just give dockets without knowing who you are giving the docket to. If Chris MacAdam had given anybody a docket, he would never have just given the docket; a docket must be signed for,” she told the commission.

“That is why I am saying, angrily so, that I hate the fact that Chris MacAdam coming here makes me a scapegoat. I was very sensitive to these particular cases.”

MacAdam, in his affidavit before the commission, did not allege that Jiba’s office collected the docket.

Jiba told the commission, chaired by retired justice Sisi Khampepe and with retired Northern Cape judge president Frans Diale Kgomo and advocate Andrea Gabriel, that during her acting stints her personal assistant, Jackie Lepinka, wrote a letter to the unit handling the TRC cases and asked for clarity and the listing of names of the accused in the Cradock Four case.

She said she made the request after receiving a memorandum complaining about the case. She did not have the memo before the commission, saying the NPA could not find it.

Shaun Abrahams, a former NDPP and the head of the unit at the time, responded to her.

“I would have included that request in the letter that was written by Ms Lepinka. The last paragraph would have said, ‘Please attach the docket thereto’, but you can see the last paragraph does not even request the docket. I have never asked for the docket.”

From 2013 to 2019, when Jiba left the NPA after a finding she was not fit to hold office, she said she was never asked about the missing docket. She said she was made aware of the missing docket only when the commission gave her a notice to testify on the implication.

Evidence leader William Mokhare asked Jiba whether she was ever politically influenced or was made aware of such by the staff.

Jiba said no NPA official from the unit that handled TRC cases reported to her challenges of political interference. At the time the minister of justice was Jeff Radebe.

She said she never personally experienced political interference in the cases, adding if they had tried, they would have “failed dismally”.

“At no stage did that ever happen; even if they had tried to, they would have failed dismally. We take an oath to conduct prosecutions without fear, favour and prejudice,” she said.

“Even if you are attacked by the media from all points, you have to know that the decision you are making, you have to die with.

“Just like I died with my decisions to prosecute the Cato Manor prosecutions. They would not have succeeded at all.”

Jiba left the NPA in 2019 after being removed by President Cyril Ramaphosa. His decision followed an inquiry, chaired by retired Constitutional Court judge Yvonne Mokgoro, that found that Jiba was unfit for her role at the NPA.

The Cato Manor case she refers to involves racketeering charges against former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Maj-Gen Johan Booysen, which courts found were instituted without evidence in 2012. Authorisation for the charges was initially made by Jiba, then acting NDPP at the NPA, but was later dismissed due to insufficient evidence.