Wyndham Hartley
22 February 2008
column
Johannesburg — PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki was correct to admonish those who have forgotten that there are many good South African Police Service (SAPS) officers in SA, who put their lives on the line daily in the fight against crime.
But in driving the plan to amalgamate the Scorpions into the police, he also forgets what he said in 1999.
When Mbeki announced that a special elite unit was to be established under the auspices of the National Prosecuting Authority to fight organised crime, he said that this specifically included fighting police corruption. That unit was, of course, the Directorate of Special Operations, or the Scorpions.
Now the decision has been taken to move the Scorpions into the SAPS, where it will join the police's organised crime unit, and Mbeki has asked SA to believe that the new unit will be stronger than the sum of its parts -- in other words, that the police component will be dragged up by the addition of the Scorpions and not the other way around.
These developments come against a disturbing background. Late last year, justice director-general Menzi Simelane told MPs that of the more than 2-million cases reported to police last year, a little more than a million were enrolled for trial in the courts. Of that million, about 70% fell off the court roll without ever coming to trial.
While the success rate for the 300000 cases that do go to trial is up at about 80%, this is woeful when taken as a percentage of the whole. Reasons offered for the cases failing to go to trial vary from incomplete and botched investigations, lost dockets, and dockets simply disappearing -- all matters directly under the control of the police, not the prosecuting authority or the courts.
Also late last year, Deputy Justice Minister Johnny de Lange, in announcing progress made with the government's review of the criminal justice system, frankly admitted that parts of the system were dysfunctional. Part of this dysfunction results from the fact that many experienced detectives have left the SAPS in the past 10 years. The training of new detectives is also said to be not up to scratch. Those that are left, even the well-trained ones, have hundreds of case dockets on their desks at any one time. Thorough investigation to the point of a prosecutable case is extremely difficult.
The Scorpions' mandate is specifically to investigate organised crime. This includes international drug smuggling, human trafficking, corruption in government, serious economic and financial offences and racketeering and money laundering. The idea was to use a prosecution- and intelligence-led approach to investigations, where investigators and prosecutors worked together to bring solid cases to court.
For 2006-07, now-suspended national director of public prosecutions Vusi Pikoli reported that 267 investigations were finalised and 214 prosecutions took place, with a conviction rate of 85%. While it can be argued that the success rate is off a very low base, it is also true to say that the Scorpions' cases are often the most difficult to investigate and prosecute.
Scorpions head Leonard McCarthy said R1bn in criminal assets had been restrained and slightly less than that amount in contraband seized. Key achievements were the prosecution of Schabir Shaik, the Travelgate MPs who defrauded Parliament, and the Fidentia and Saambou cases. There are continuing investigations into internet banking syndicates, as well as diamond smuggling and a syndicate that has infiltrated the social development department's computers.
The performance of a unit that is only seven years old is impressive and seems to outweigh any argument that SA will be better served by amalgamating it with the SAPS.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the Scorpions is that it leaks like a sieve, with information on investigations seemingly reaching the public domain without restraint. That and its pursuit of senior members of the ruling party can only be the major reasons for the scrapping of the unit.
Hartley is parliamentary editor.
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