On Tuesday draft legislation was tabled before parliament to finally kill-off the Scorpions. At Polokwane the ANC had adopted a resolution demanding the dissolution of the Directorate of Special Operations and for the incorporation of "Members of the DSO performing policing functions" into the South African Police Service. In February the Mail & Guardian reported that Siphiwe Nyanda, a member of the ANC's National Working Committee, had said that DSO investigators would be "vetted" before being allowed into the SAPS.
And so it has come to pass:
The General Laws Amendment Bill, published yesterday, provides for the establishment of a Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) within the SAPS which will comprise "all selected officials, other than prosecutors" who held office as members of the DSO, along with members of the Organised and Commercial crime units of the police.
The DPCI will be headed by a divisional commissioner who will report to the Deputy National Commissioner responsible for crime intelligence. All members of the new body will be subjected to a screening process. If they pass this they will receive a certificate from the national commissioner. A person will only receive this if the National Commissioner satisfies himself that they are not a "security risk" or "might act in any way prejudicial to the efficiency" of the DCNI. The National Commissioner has the right to withdraw the certificate in which case "the person concerned shall be unfit to continue to hold such office."
As should be perfectly clear from the above, the Bill has one purpose only. To break-up the DSO and extend direct control over what is left of it. Officials will be effectively deprived of their sense of institutional solidarity as well as their individual security of tenure.
In ANC eyes the DSO has developed into something of an aberration. The party and its alliance partners have thrown buckets of dirt at the DSO - but that organisation is not being punished for what it has done wrong (others have done much worse) but for what it has done right.
Although the process had begun well before, in 1998 the ANC publicly set about bringing all "levers of power" under party control. This was done though a combination of cadre deployment, legislative amendments (where needed), and the sidelining of any independent-minded professional who stood in their way. Carol Paton has described this programme as "perhaps the biggest disaster of the transition period." The City Press columnist Khathu Mamaila recently observed:
"It is in the interest of the country to have a separation of roles. If this happens, merit will replace political allegiance. A local municipality would be able to appoint and retain a qualified engineer instead of appointing a former school teacher simply because he has the right political connections. Patronage has an adverse impact on service delivery. In many local authorities cadres have been appointed with little regard for skills and qualifications but mainly because of political considerations. Consequently, there are chief financial officers who have no accounting background."
Since ANC cadres soon controlled all the security services, and watchdog institutions, it also helped breed a culture of impunity. The general understanding within the ANC was that while the security forces could go about their day-to-day work, certain sensitive matters would be left to the party to deal with internally. The ANC, in Jacob Zuma's words, was above the constitution.
The DSO was established by the ANC government at a time when the police service had yet to be brought under party direction. Since there was already a party cadre (Bulelani Ngcuka) in charge of the prosecuting authority, the ANC probably did not feel that this new institution constituted any kind of threat.
Yet over time the DSO seems to have developed an esprit de corps, a relatively high degree of professionalism, and a popular legitimacy of its own. In Western democracies these institutional qualities are regarded as both necessary and desirable. In South Africa, they have made the DSO an anathema to the ANC.
The DSO broke the unwritten rules of the ANC by investigating and prosecuting senior party cadres. It placed, in other words, loyalty to the constitution over loyalty to the party. The second National Director of Public Prosecutions, Vusi Pikoli, was as much of a party man as the first. But he seems to have taken his constitutional obligations to heart. And last year he flouted a direct instruction from his political superiors to pull the arrest and search warrants that had been issued against the national police commissioner, Jackie Selebi.
The capacity and developing independence of the DSO made it a threat to all corrupt elements in the ANC regardless of which camp they fell into the succession battle. It is not wholly surprising that a consensus has emerged within the ANC that it should be done-in, post-Polokwane.
