The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) says it will pursue suspects with a fervent passion to secure convictions, despite threats and intimidation by some groups.

Managers and prosecutors in the NPA will undergo training in the next few months, in what is called the "fearless executive programme".

This to ensure that prosecutors do not relent in their quest to get convictions despite threats and intimidation they may experience. National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Bulelani Ngcuka made this announcement in Kempton Park today, during a two-day national conference to address challenges facing prosecutors and the state in which they worked in. Advocate Ngcuka told delegates that the new "fearless executive" would be competent managers, which was necessitated by the NPA's experience during and after the Hefer Commission. The Hefer Commission was established to find out whether the NDPP had been an apartheid agent or had abused his power. However Judge Joos Hefer found that Ngcuka was "probably never" an apartheid agent. Advocate Ngcuka said such new challenges necessitated that prosecutors were capacitated with new skills, so as not to relent when taking unpopular decisions against high profile people and crime syndicates. "It is not enough just to be technically competent. If there is one lesson we must learn from the Hefer Commission as an organisation and as individuals, is that if we are to deliver, we must be fearless. "We must become fearless executives, afraid of nothing and willing to overcome every obstacle put in our way," said the Advocate. Programme manager Paul Leisegang said prosecutors would undergo 14 months of training in psychological assessment, self-defence, assertiveness and other technical operations to ensure they were "fearless in their prosecutions".

"This is a high capacity building training in self-defence, and other highly technical operations so that both the mind and body can withstand anything".

Advocate Ngcuka said the fearless executive programme would arm the NPA and take the six-year-old organisation out of "our comfort zones and place us squarely in the zone of discomfort". – BuaNews.