Why is Adv. Simelane getting away with cutting the heads off the AFU and the SCCU?
Simelane is doing so by creating the new concept of the ‘dotted reporting line' - in anticipation of cutting along the dotted line
Who stands to benefit from feeling safe...not from crime but from prosecution?





The Minister of Justice is sadly misinformed if he thinks, as indicated by his reply received yesterday (see below) that the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP),Adv Menzi Simelane, has honoured the instructions of both the Minister and the President of the Republic and has stopped the restructuring of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

The Minister either thinks or is advised or feels forced to say that Adv Simelane has halted the restructuring of the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) and the Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit (SCCU); whereas it is clear from the NDPP's replies to my questions in the Justice Portfolio Committee on 11th August (which we have transcribed and follows below the reply) that he is stubbornly proceeding with the strategic plan presented to the same committee on 13th April and which I reported to both the Minister and the President. Both Minister and President, suitably shocked, then said they had stopped such shenanigans. So why haven't they?

It has to be said that the only persons in South Africa who will feel confident that Ministerial Performance Regime Outcome 3: "all people in South Africa are and feel safe" will be "delivered" - as the Minister so preciously puts it in his reply - are persons who feel that that they are safe and delivered from prosecution, a process with which our President is intimately acquainted.

Why is the NDPP being allowed to get away with this? Why does the Minister of Justice say without blushing that "operationally the Directors of Public Prosecutions are prosecuting commercial cases within their areas of jurisdiction and continuing to report to the Deputy Directors of Public Prosecutions in the office of the NDPP "? It is not the DPPs (the provincial Attorney Generals of old) or their offices who are supposed to report to the DDPPs, Messrs Willie Hofmeyr and Chris Jordaan, for these purposes, it is their own staff, appointed in terms of their own Act and in terms of Presidential Proclamation.

Adv Simelane has introduced a new concept: the dotted reporting line. The units described as recently as the Justice Budget Vote in May this year by the Minister as "key pillars in the fight against crime" and which are supposed to report to their own heads now have to report along "a solid line" to the provincial Directors of Public Prosecutions and along "a dotted line" to their legislated Heads. "Various heads in the DPP offices" now " do reports" and "submit these to the office of the NDPP for Chris to have a look at", and also to "Willy". I have said since April 13th that the units are being decapitated. All that has changed is that they are being cut (off) along the dotted line...in defiance of the Minister and the President, who promised me in the National Assembly that restructuring had been stopped.