Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia is reported to have made the following submission to the police portfolio committee of the National Assembly earlier this week: “Corruption is a problem in police services across the world, but that’s no consolation to us. But it needs to be acknowledged, and we’re going to need to think about enhancing the strategies and the structures that are in place.”
This statement, coming as it does from a man who until recently (and for three years) chaired the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council, is rich in unintended irony.
The problem is not one of enhancing strategies and structures. It is the failure of government to act on and properly implement the binding findings of the Constitutional Court in the Glenister litigation.
A proper conspectus of the court findings reveals that parliament has been ordered to legislate a single agency solution in the form of “a body outside executive control” to deal with corruption effectively. If the acting minister thinks the court cannot so order, he is sorely mistaken; it has.
A single structure is required by law, not the enhancement of existing structures (the multi-agency approach, spurned by the court findings), which are manifestly not working with efficiency and effectiveness as required in law.
There is no body outside executive control in existence in SA, despite the binding nature of the judgments in question.
The single agency solution, a body preferably housed in the architecture of Chapter Nine of the constitution, that is specialised, manned by trained experts who are in an operational and structural environment that is independent and who enjoy both guaranteed resources and secure tenure of office, is what respecters of the rule of law have been expecting for far too long.
Instead of trying to enhance failed strategies and superfluous structures, the minister should get on with implementing the judgment he is officially obliged to respect and uphold.
The two private members bills currently in the works in parliament tick all the boxes created in the Glenister litigation. It is high time for proper implementation of the binding judicial precedent, not tinkering to enhance palpably failed “strategies and structures”.
The multi-agency approach is illegal in SA — a single body “outside executive control” is what the law requires and the country deserves.
Paul Hoffman
Accountability Now
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 200 words may be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.