Prosecutions head Shamilay Batohi, said there is no crisis at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), when members of Parliament took her to task, posing questions on her performance.
This also follows the resignation of its Investigating Directorate head Hermione Cronje.
Prosecutions head Shamilay Batohi is not prepared to discuss in Parliament, as to why Hermoine Cronje left Investigating Directorate, meanwhile insisting that there is no crisis.
Frustrations were tangible among members of Parliament’s justice and correctional services committee when the National Director of Public Prosecutions, advocate Shamila Batohi, delivered a report on the resignation of Investigating Directorate (ID) head Hermione Cronje and the continuity plan for the directorate.
Committee member, Glynnis Breytenbach, a former long-time senior state prosecutor, characteristically blunt asking questions of Batohi or commenting on Cronje’s resignation before end of her five-year term.
Breytenbach, said she is not convinced by Batohi’s utterances that there is no crisis mode at the prosecuting authority, considering Cronje’s leaving.
Advocate Cronje is deemed not to be known as a faint-hearted woman.
She knew what the job was when she signed up for it. She has a history in the NPA, she was a senior manager in the NPA for some time, she knew what she was getting into.
“I am not convinced by this suggestion that everything is hunky-dory and there are no issues, and her leaving is nothing odd and that in fact it is healthy to change horses in midstream, when we know it isn’t.
“We don’t know why she has left, and we are left to speculate, and the national director is not telling us. It is deeply disturbing that someone of advocate Cronje’s calibre has abandoned her project — on which she has worked very hard — at great personal cost, half complete. It’s unlike her, and it leaves me deeply concerned… while it may well be healthy to change leadership now and then, this was a fixed-term contract, it was for five years,” said Breytenbach
Cronje’s resignation is considered to be be a culmination of various factors, which she was “not prepared to discuss in Parliament”, said Batohi.
Batohi’s written report to the committee details the following, an “incorrect narrative” that Cronje left her post because the two did not get along. This made for “dramatic reporting” said Batohi, but “that is where it ends. “
In summary, Batohi said Cronje’s resignation was not a sign that the NPA was in crisis.
Source: Daily Maverick, EWN
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