MK Party chief whip Mzwanele Manyi says the party will this year, among other things in parliament, prioritise having National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Adv Shamila Batohi declared unfit to hold office.
The party feels that Batohi’s six years at the helm of the prosecuting authority have been characterised by chasing enemies of the hegemonic administration instead of pursuing evidence-based prosecution.
Manyi said the MK Party in parliament would ensure that Batohi’s incompetence is exposed and she is declared unfit to continue in the job.
According to Manyi, the botched prosecution of former Eskom executive Matshela Koko is one example of how the NPA has become a toothless dog under Batohi.
But Manyi believes Batohi should fall alongside Investigating Directorate head Andrea Johnson, as he believes the duo are together in the crooked space.
Manyi said Batohi was hired primarily to nail the so-called enablers of state capture and graft in the public sector but after six years in the post, she has achieved nothing or less since taking office.
“We want to challenge her fitness to hold the office. We think that Batohi and her systems follow individuals instead of following evidence,” said Manyi during a wide-ranging interview with Sunday World Engage this week.
“We think that Batohi has done a lot of disservice in that position. In South Africa, everybody has been talking about state capture and all of that.
“Batohi should have come clean now and said with this state capture narrative, here are the culprits and here is the evidence, or there is nothing. But she has done none of the above.”
Manyi said he did not buy Batohi’s excuse that the NPA had been unable to get convictions on so-called state capture crimes because of a lack of financial resources and critical skills needed to analyse financial flow data.
“On year one of holding a position, you can say that. You cannot say that on year six. It means you are incompetent, so we do not buy that. She had the opportunity; six years into the job, she has nothing to show for it,” he claims.
Manyi said the MKP was of the firm belief that Batohi and Johnson specialise in smearing people’s names and their standing in society.
In the party’s view, the corruption case against Koko, which was struck off the roll by the Middleburg Commercial Court in 2023, was evidence that Batohi bit off more than she could chew by taking the job.
“Matshela Koko was taken from his home at 5 o’clock in the morning and arrested along with his family but up to today they have not put anything that sticks on Matshela Koko, yet the entire world knows him to be this corrupt person. I put that firmly and squarely on Batohi.
“But also, there is a clip doing the rounds where Batohi and Andrea Johnson admit to having a strategy of ‘faking it until you make it’ where they go to court with empty files just for show. They do that knowing they have no evidence, and they go to court to ask for postponements and all kinds of things,” Manyi went on.
“Why do we have a prosecution that is playing games with people’s lives like this?
“We will be putting together a clear recommendation that both Batohi and Andrea Johnson must be declared unfit to hold office.”
Manyi is not buying the defence that Batohi might be a victim of political interference in the functioning of the NPA.
In his view, political interference is an eventuality that cannot be avoided but with Batohi, she was just unable to manage politics while efficiently carrying out her job.
“Political interference will always be there but the inability to manage it indicates incompetence on its own. So [in the case of Batohi], you have an inability to manage political interference, and number two, you also have general technical incompetence.”
Manyi said another embarrassing proof that Batohi is a failure was the inability to have the Gupta brothers extradited from the United Arab Emirates.
“The Interpol on the Guptas is off; there is no Interpol on them. They are roaming freely in Dubai. But South Africa is being told lies that the Dubai system is not cooperating, absolute nonsense.”
NPA spokesperson Advocate Mthunzi Mhaga had not responded to questions at the time of publication.
