The appointment of the SIU head Andy Mothibi as the next NPA boss is a solid one — but we still need to question the process. Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head Andy Mothibiwill be South Africa’s next National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) come 1 February, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Tuesday – and the appointment has been warmly received. This is for good reason.
A hardworking, unshowy technocrat, Mothibi has developed a reputation as something of a turnaround whiz, and there are few institutions in as much need of turning around as South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Mothibi was that rarest of characters: a solid Jacob Zuma pick. Any legal-related appointments made by former president Zuma in 2016 were always going to be greeted sceptically, but if Zuma secretly hoped that Mothibi would underperform as head of the SIU, he was in for disappointment.
Mothibi has been an excellent head of the once-troubled SIU, in terms of both its institutional culture and its performance. He has brought the unit to financial stability and reportedly secured unusually high staff morale after implementing an effective turnaround strategy. In the 2023/24 financial year, under Mothibi, the SIU reported itshighest recoveryof stolen or misspent money, with R2.28-billion in cash returned to the state.
Read Full Article on Daily Maverick
[paywall]
In total, SIU investigations in that year saved the government an estimated R8-billion – a figure that includes not only cash recovered, but also contract payments stopped or assets preserved before they could be wasted. Under Mothibi, the SIU has aggressively pursued civil asset freezes and forfeitures, played a key role in post-State Capture cleanup at state-owned entities, and gone after corrupt government officials. It has been a shining light within South Africa’s depleted criminal justice institutions.
Mothibi also has a richly varied professional history: from being a magistrate, to helping establish the SA Revenue Service, to working as head of compliance at South African Airways, to heading up risk units at Standard Bank and Nedbank. This is somebody who knows South Africa’s public and private sectors inside and out, which is both unusual and useful. Little wonder that his appointment by President Ramaphosa as NDPP head has been warmly received across the political spectrum and by civil society.
To recap: a panel to interview prospective heads of the NDPP wasseemingly hastily convened by Ramaphosain December. It was, to say the least, a strange panel, including just two lawyers and nobody with any prosecutorial experience.
[/paywall]
