Besides effecting high-profile arrests this year, the State should be recognised for putting officials, business people and police implicated in serious crimes behind bars, writes Karyn Maughan.
State capture inquiry-linked arrests made big headlines in 2020 - a powerful indication of just how desperate corruption-exhausted South Africans are for genuine accountability.
But, while these cases will undoubtedly be pivotal to restoring public hope in the country's law enforcement, they are not what the National Prosecuting Authority should be most proud of this year.
Rather, the state needs to be recognised for doing something far more challenging than effecting high-profile arrests: actually putting officials, business people and police implicated in serious crimes behind bars, no matter how long it takes them to do so.
In the past few months, once untouchable police crime intelligence bosses Richard Mdluli and Solly Lazarus, both implicated in the alleged abuse of a secret service slush fund, have been respectively sentenced to five and 10 years behind bars for offences committed over decade ago.
Mdluli's jail term is, arguably, miraculous - given how attempts to block the cases against him from ever proceeding nearly collapsed the NPA and almost fatally damaged its credibility.
Oupa Ramogibe murder
The State's protracted and ultimately successful kidnapping and assault prosecution against Mdluli had its genesis in the 1999 murder of 26-year-old Oupa Ramogibe, who had secretly married Mdluli's customary law wife Tshidi Buthelezi.
Mdluli was charged with Ramogibe's murder on 31 March 2011, two years after being appointed head of crime intelligence. He was suspended on 8 May that year. Four months after that, in September 2011, Mdluli was charged with fraud and corruption, linked to the alleged looting of the secret service account.
Mdluli wrote to then President Jacob Zuma in November 2011, claiming that the charges against him were the consequence of a conspiracy cooked up by the country's most senior police officials, including then National Commissioner Bheki Cele and Hawks boss Anwa Dramat.
He further promised that:
"in the event that I come back to work I will assist the President to succeed next year [the ANC's December 2012 elective congress in Mangaung]".
Within three months of Mdluli sending Zuma that letter, the NPA withdrew charges against him for the murder, kidnapping and assault of Ramogibe, as well as for the alleged slush fund looting.
It would take two years of legal batting, but advocacy group Freedom Under Law eventually obtained a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that found the decisions to withdraw these cases to be both irrational and unlawful.
The NPA, under the leadership of Mxolisi Nxasana, reinstated the corruption, kidnapping and assault charges against Mdluli but did not proceed with the murder case because of a lack of evidence.
That decision lost him Zuma's support and ultimately cost him his job.
Nxasana would be given a R17-million "golden handshake" deal from Zuma to walk away from his position - an agreement later found to be unlawful by the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. Zuma's appointment of Nxasana's replacement Shaun Abrahams was also found to be unlawful, in a decision confirmed by the Constitutional Court.
Mulitiple victims within NPA
Nonetheless, while the Mdluli saga claimed multiple victims within the ranks of the NPA, senior Johannesburg prosecutors Zaais van Zyl and Deon Barnard doggedly pursued the kidnapping and assault case against the clearly very powerful crime intelligence boss - in a trial that dragged on for half a decade.
After the State proved that Mdluli and his co-accused Mthembeni Mthunzi were guilty of kidnapping and assault in July last year, it would take until September this year for the pair to finally be sentenced to five years behind bars.
The slush fund looting case against Mdluli is due back in court on 8 February.
READ | Richard Mdluli likens himself to Mandela says he will petition SCA to appeal 5-year jail term
Meanwhile, his co-accused in that case, former Crime Intelligence chief financial officer Major General Solomon Lazarus, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in December for corruptly using the secret service account to buy cars for himself and his family members.
Magistrate Adrian Bekker found Lazarus guilty of corruption in a case that is almost a decade old and is linked to crime intelligence's purchases of a KIA Picanto (for Lazarus's daughter), a Nissan Murano (for himself), a Honda CBR motorcycle (for his son), and a Honda TRX 250 All Terrain Vehicle motorcycle (also for himself).
The case had been taken over by the NPA's Investigating Directorate, a newly formed unit that has prioritised the prosecution of law enforcement officials implicated in corruption.
Given the devastation that the Mdluli saga wreaked on the police, NPA and rule of law itself, it isn't hard to understand why the ID has focused its attention on cases involving allegedly corrupt police bosses.
Accountability for 'untouchable' cops
Lazarus's conviction and sentence is the first achieved by the ID, which is also responsible for the majority of the so-called state capture prosecutions launched in 2020.
Beyond ensuring that "untouchable" cops finally face some form of accountability, the Mdluli and Lazarus cases demonstrate that the tenacity that will be required of the state in its prosecution of powerful officials and politically connected business people.
While the State may succeed in striking plea deals with some accused, the majority of these "state capture" cases will be complex, protracted and, almost certainly, litigious.
Barnard and Van Zyl, who is most well-known for his adept prosecution of Leigh Matthews' murderer Donovan Moodley, spent years navigating their way through multiple legal battles, delays and unfounded attacks on their integrity before they finally proved Mdluli's guilt.
By getting those convictions, these two prosecutors managed to claw back some credibility for an NPA whose former leadership had done everything it could to kill the cases against Mdluli - including forcing out prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach, who fiercely opposed the withdrawal of the Mdluli charges.
More importantly, Van Zyl and Barnard demonstrated a quality that a still very dysfunctional NPA will desperately need in the coming year.
Despite all the chaos that surrounded them, they kept doing their jobs. And they did not give up.
- Karyn Maughan is News24's legal writer.
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