After the selection panel interviews of December 10-11, it is plain to knowledgeable observers that the frontrunners for the soon-to-be vacant post of national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) are Hermione Cronje and Xolisile Khanyile.
It is a blessing that Menzi Simelane cooked his own goose with his imaginatively facile answers during his interview concerning the many question marks around his integrity, going all the way back to the Ginwala inquiry of 2008.
Simelane gave evidence in that inquiry, was exposed as mendacious during rigorous cross-examination and was the subject of an adverse credibility finding against him, which reads, in part: “I have found the conduct of [Simelane] highly irregular.… He had a duty to place all relevant information before the inquiry”, (which he did not do). “His testimony before the inquiry was also not particularly helpful to me; his evidence was contradictory and I found him to be arrogant and condescending in his attitude towards advocate [Vusi] Pikoli.”
These findings are not mere commentary, as Simelane sought to argue to the panel. Prof Somadoda Fikeni pointed out to him that his integrity — a necessary quality in all prosecutors — was questioned again and again in public responses filed with the panel.
Simelane sought to dismiss this damning adverse credibility finding against him on the unsustainable basis that “it could not have been a finding, because the inquiry was not about me”.
Simelane should know that all evidence from all witnesses in a properly conducted inquiry, which the Ginwala Commission indubitably was, has to be weighed and assessed for its credibility before it can be used as a basis for making any findings of fact germane to the subject matter of the inquiry.
His evidence was rejected on the grounds quoted above from the inquiry’s final report, which also found he tried to mislead the inquiry.
• Paul Hoffman is director of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa
Also read:
NDPP hot seat: Cronje pins blame for NPA woes on Menzi Simelane
EDITORIAL: Transparency without accountability won’t fix the NDPP crisis
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