By Johnathan Paoli
Civil society organisations Accountability Now and the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum (APCOF) have warned Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee investigating allegations of criminality, political interference and corruption, that the country’s policing and prosecutorial architecture is fundamentally unfit to confront entrenched corruption and executive interference.
Leading the morning, Accountability Now Chairperson and senior counsel Paul Hoffman started his presentation with stressing the extent to which corruption has hamstrung criminal justice in South Africa.
“The nub of the problem is that the criminal justice administration in South Africa is dysfunctional because corruption with impunity is rampant in the land, and that is what this committee is going to have to address from the point of view of Parliament,” Hoffman said.
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Drawing heavily on the Constitutional Court’s 2011 Glenister II judgment, Hoffman reminded MPs that the court had ruled that South Africa’s Constitution “demands a body, a single body, outside executive control” to effectively combat corruption.
He argued that Parliament had failed to give effect to that ruling, instead settling for successive legislative versions of the Hawks, which remain located within the police and therefore under executive authority.
Hoffman said the Hawks are not a body outside executive control, linking their structural weakness to the Minister of Police’s directive to shut down the Political Killings Task Team; a move he described as executive interference in an entity “by its very nature” tasked with addressing corruption.
Hoffman traced the current crisis back to the disbandment of the Scorpions in 2009, which he said was a mistake acknowledged even by the acting Minister of Police.
He argued that the Scorpions’ prosecution-led, single-agency model had been deliberately dismantled because it was “far too successful” in pursuing politically connected individuals.
He further challenged the widely held assumption that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is independent, pointing to constitutional provisions that place it under the “final responsibility” of the Minister of Justice and deny it control over its own budget.
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According to Hoffman, this structural subordination fatally undermines the NPA’s ability to confront high-level corruption.
While government has attempted to plug the gap through the Investigative Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC), Hoffman described the unit, housed within the NPA and staffed by fewer than 200 people, as indistinguishable in law from the Scorpions, yet politically vulnerable and institutionally fragile.
As a remedy, Hoffman endorsed a proposal by committee member Glynnis Breytenbach to establish a new Chapter 9 Anti-Corruption Commission, reporting directly to Parliament and protected by the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority for dissolution.
Such a body, he argued, would finally satisfy the Constitutional Court’s demand for independence from executive control and restore credibility to the fight against corruption.
APCOF Director Sean Tait, in turn, focused his submission on Parliament’s own role in the unfolding crisis, warning that weak oversight had contributed to the breakdown of public trust in policing and governance.
“Allegations of political interference in policing go to the heart of the separation of powers and independent democratic policing, and they demand serious and immediate attention and action by Parliament,” Tait said.
Tait said allegations of political interference in policing strike at the heart of the separation of powers and cannot be treated as matters of political discretion.
He cited Mkhwanazi’s claim that previous submissions to Parliament had gone unaddressed as a warning sign that oversight mechanisms were failing.
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To address this, APCOF called for strengthened parliamentary capacity, including improved follow-up on committee recommendations, enhanced training for MPs and parliamentary staff on evolving criminal justice issues, and more robust systems to track executive compliance.
Among its proposals were the creation of a dedicated subcommittee to monitor executive-police interactions, mandatory written records of ministerial instructions to SAPS, and sanctions for executive members who fail to account to Parliament.
Tait also urged legislative reforms to insulate police operational command from political interference through merit-based appointments, clearer role separation between the minister and the national commissioner, and stronger protections for senior officers’ tenure.
Both presentations framed the committee’s work as a pivotal opportunity to confront systemic failures rather than individual misconduct, warning that without deep structural reform, allegations of interference and corruption would continue to recur,
Further submissions are expected from the Institute for Security Studies, Gun Free SA and other stakeholders, including Patricia Mashale, as the committee continues its public engagement process.
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