PHUTI MOSOMANE
BANTU Holomisa, leader of the United Democratic Movement (UDM), has requested that President Cyril Ramaphosa establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the fitness of National Director for Public Prosecutions, Adv Shamila Batohi, to hold office.
He has also urged for her temporary suspension until the inquiry’s conclusion.
“There is no evidence that Advocate Batohi has done anything to fulfil her obligations as directed by the Constitution. The two recent judgments, one at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Court and the other at the Bloemfontein High Court provide overwhelming evidence that Advocate Batohi did not comply with her constitutional obligations and failed to make the required interventions to ensure that policy directives are complied with,” Holomisa said on Monday.
Holomisa has cited a February 2023 unanimous judgment by a full bench in a Dubai court, which rejected an application to extradite the Gupta brothers, Atul Kumar Gupta and Rajesh Kumar Gupta.
The court noted that the extradition request for the fraud charge was not fulfilled due to the cancellation of the arrest warrant as per Article 3/9 of the Extradition Agreement.
Additionally, the submitted documents for the corruption charge did not include an arrest warrant against the individuals to be extradited, thereby failing to fulfill the extradition conditions for that crime under the same article.
Holomisa has claimed that the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa (NPA)’s incompetence, incapacity and inefficiency have led to public outcry and international embarrassment for the country.
He believes that these shortcomings reflect poorly on the National Director of Public Prosecutions.
“Advocate Batohi has failed dismally to execute her duties and responsibilities as outlined in the Constitution in terms of Section 179(5),” he said, adding that the fact that both the responsible Minister and the National Director of Public Prosecutions only got to know about this far-reaching verdict in the middle of April 2023 is the clearest demonstration of dereliction of duty by Batohi, whom he said should have regularly kept the NPA and the Minister informed of every move of the UAE authorities, long before the court date.”
Another “national embarrassing moment for South Africa”, Holomisa said, was to learn that Batohi did not even know about the date of the hearing in February 2023 until rudely awoken by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola a couple of months after the judgment was handed down.
“In a normal democracy she would have been summarily dismissed,” he said.
In an important case, S v Thabethe and others, which formed the basis for an extradition request to the UAE, the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa (NPA) suffered another humiliating defeat.
Gusha AJ handed down a judgment on April 21, 2023, which cleared the Gupta brothers of fraud, money laundering, and corruption charges, stating that there was no evidence to support the indictment sheet.
Holomisa views this verdict as a devastating blow to the NPA, reducing the high-profile case to mere street gossip.
Holomisa also accused Batohi of dragging her feet in prosecuting those implicated in the Zondo Commission’s findings.
He argues that this and the two aforementioned judgments – one from the UAE court and the other from the Bloemfontein High Court – raise doubts about Batohi’s fitness to hold office as the National Director of Public Prosecutions.
“We call on you, as the President of the Republic of South Africa, to invoke the relevant provisions of section 12(6) of the NPA Act and implement the following two recommendations: Appoint a commission of inquiry to establish the fitness of Advocate Batohi to hold office. Provisionally suspend Advocate Batohi pending the outcome of such an inquiry,” he said.
“We reserve our rights to seek other legal remedies should the President not accede to this reasonable request in 21 days after receipt of this letter.”
INSIDE POLITICS
