By Simon Nare
The Nkabinde Inquiry was on Wednesday forced into adjournment after chairperson Constitutional Court Justice Elizabeth Nkabinde raised alarm about the safety of a witness who had implicated several people who could pose a threat to her life.
Nkabinde described allegations contained in former KwaZulu-Natal director of public prosecutions Advocate Moipone Noko as serious which needed to be discussed further with her and the legal teams.
Noko had earlier testified how members of the Durban Organised Crime Unit shot suspects and staged crime scenes to make it appear as though the unit shot in self defence.
She broke down close to tears when she told the inquiry about how former National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Shamila Batohi hounded her out of the NPA for simply doing her job.
Noko told the inquiry which is probing South Gauteng director of public prosecution Advocate Andrew Chauke, how Batohi pushed her to resign when she made her life unbearable in what she described as punishment for her sound prosecution decisions.
“I was tired. I feel I was pushed out. I didn’t have a choice, I had to resign in February 2021. I was emotionally tied of being falsely accused of protecting certain people in certain cases, of doing things in cases that I did not do,” she testified.
“The media was running a show about me on that one and my colleagues in the NPA, some of them were feeding the media those lies. So, I was tired and it had been many years me trying to explain this is what happened in this case.”
Noko testified that as a senior member of the NPA she felt under constant attack and was even associated with State Capture and she was singled out for prosecution decisions even though such decisions were being taken by a team not her as an individual.
She said to rebut some of the “lies” that were being peddled in the media, she decided to write a memo which she circulated to all her colleagues because she felt they deserved to know the truth in case they were believing the “lies” they were reading in the media.
In the memo, Noko revealed to her colleagues that for almost a decade
It was at this point that Noko broke down and Nkabinde adjourned the proceedings to allow her to calm down.
But during short break, the panel and lawyers were locked in chambers discussing Noko’s safety.
“We got concerned having read your papers that they are raising very serious allegations,” said Nkabinde, adding that Noko should be accommodated closer to the sitting venue and not far which compels her to travel long distance to make it to the proceedings.
Noko said she agrees that she should be closer to the venue but her issue was her safety and that was the reason she was staying in Sandton which is her home and has to travel daily to Pretoria.
Noko’s testimony is seen as key because she dealt directly with some of the matters under review.
The former KwaZulu-Natal DPP is linked to decisions on charges against Durban businessman Thoshan Panday, a figure close to former President Jacob Zuma’s family, and his police partner Colonel Navin Madhoe.
Booysen has accused her of dropping those charges, which ties into broader questions about how prosecutions were handled across provinces.
Chauke’s team, on the other hand, wants her to speak, and with no pushback from others.
INSIDE POLITICS