Outgoing national director of public prosecutionsShamila Batohiused her final day in office on Friday to reflect on her seven-year tenure, saying she leaves behind a stronger and more resilient National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Presenting the NPA’s 2024/2025 annual report, Batohi described institutional rebuilding as her central achievement, saying that the entity she inherited in 2019 had been weakened by the era of state capture. “I leave behind an NPA that is more independent, more credible, more resilient and more future ready than the one I inherited when I took office seven years ago,” she said, urging hersuccessor Andy Mothibito fight for more institutional independence and for competitive salaries to attract high profile advocates.
Batohi said her return to South Africa from the International Criminal Court in The Hague in February 2019 to take up the post came as the NPA faced declining public trust and operational challenges. “We had to rebuild a broken institution while simultaneously delivering on our core prosecutorial responsibilities, given the understandable impatience for accountability and justice in this country,” she said, describing the early period of her term as “a time that was marked by institutional decay, erosion of public trust and a deeply compromised criminal justice system”. Batohi pointed to marginal progress in high-profile corruption cases involving theGupta familywhich was at the centre of state capture, as well as state-owned enterprises such as logistics company Transnet.
Earlier on Friday, the NPA said the case against former public enterprises minister Malusi Gigaba, former Transnet group chief financial officer together Anoj Singh, former group chief executive Brian Molefe, former chief executive Siyabonga Gama and former chief procurement officer Thamsanqa Jiyane had been postponed to 19 February at the South Gauteng High Court. The indictments served on the group relate to a process of acquiring locomotives to expand and modernise the country’s rail infrastructure, during which the tender processes were flouted and three contracts were irregularly awarded to provide Transnet with 95, 100 and 1 064 locomotives in three different contracts, resulting in a loss of billions of rands for the entity. “As much as many cases, important cases have not gone to finality, many of the key Gupta lieutenants are in court and many in this particular [Transnet] case as well,” Batohi said.
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She acknowledged public frustration over the pace of prosecutions but stressed that complex corruption and organised crime cases take years to conclude. “Despite important progress in various areas, South Africans are understandably frustrated by the slow pace of complex corruption cases and the lack of orange overalls for the most egregious offenders,” she said. “They require intelligence, documents from multiple jurisdictions that must meet admissibility requirements, skilled investigators, forensic analysis and most importantly a justice system that can withstand relentless delay tactics.”
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