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South Africa: Why the Delay?
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
EDITORIAL
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Johannesburg
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki's attitude to the release of the Khampepe commission's findings on the future of the Scorpions is incomprehensible.
Only the recommendation that the political authority over the elite crime-busting unit should remain with the justice department, and that operational authority should revert to the safety and security department, has been made public.
When the announcement that the Scorpions were to be amalgamated with the South African Police Service's organised crime unit was made in early February, Mbeki promised that when the legislation to achieve this reached Parliament he would make the Khampepe report public. Now, in response to a Democratic Alliance application for the report in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, he has refused on the grounds of state security, preferring to wait for a more "appropriate time". One is forced to ask, if state security would be compromised by the release of the document, why he promised to release it at all. If the release of the report will not compromise state security in a month's time, say, why would it do so now?
Is Mbeki acting out of political spite, not wanting to be seen to be giving in to the official opposition? If so, he misses the point that was emphasised by market research released this week which shows that upwards of 70% of all South Africans want the Scorpions to be retained as a crime-fighting unit independent of the South African Police Service.
Mbeki and ministers in the criminal justice cluster have long emphasised that organised crime is a major threat to the country. It is arguable that by pursuing the course of amalgamating the Scorpions with the police, as ordered by the Jacob Zuma-dominated ANC conference in December, he is doing more harm to state security than by releasing the report, regardless of how explosive the contents may be. Or is the real issue that Khampepe recommends the opposite of the intended course of action: the retention of the Scorpions just as they are?
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