By any fair reckoning, the one charge that cannot be levelled at Adv Shamila Batohi is that she has fulfilled the promise of her term of office.
Appointed six years ago to rescue the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) from the wreckage of state capture, her arrival was met with fanfare and hope. What followed, however, was not a prosecutorial renaissance but an era of mounting failure, legal embarrassment and institutional decay.
Batohi inherited a broken institution, yes, but under her leadership, the NPA has gone from crisis to catastrophe. If success was the goal, then one might be forgiven for assuming failure became the actual metric of achievement. So consistently has the NPA stumbled that its credibility now lies in tatters – scorned by the courts, doubted by the public, and ridiculed in legal circles.
From the farcical Gupta extradition fiasco, to the shambolic prosecution of Matshela Koko, the crumbled case against Timothy Omotoso, and the legal thrashing in the Moroadi Cholota matter, Batohi’s tenure reads like a compendium of institutional implosion.
The NPA is not a student law clinic. It is a constitutional body tasked with prosecuting without fear, favour or prejudice. Yet, under Batohi, it has operated more like a legal apprentice fumbling through a badly rehearsed script. Were it not so grave, one might call it comical. But this is not a performance – this is the machinery of justice. And it is malfunctioning.
The Cholota case, in particular, laid bare the rot. As a key figure in the corruption scandal surrounding former Free State premier Ace Magashule, Cholota challenged the legality of her extradition from the US.
The court agreed – citing a 2023 Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that only the minister of justice not the NPA, may initiate such requests.
How the NPA blundered through this without correction is anyone’s guess, but Justice Phillip Loubser was in no mood for leniency. His ruling was a judicial broadside, condemning the NPA’s conduct as dishonest, reckless and legally indefensible.
And yet, instead of introspection, we got excuses.
NPA spin doctor Mthunzi Mhaga blamed wealthy accused individuals and their deep legal war chests. But when a judge accuses your office of procedural malpractice, blaming your opponents is not just disingenuous, it is defeatist. It exposes an institution more concerned with PR spin than legal precision.
The truth is harsher. The NPA under Batohi has cultivated a culture of haste over preparation, media optics over meticulous work, and ambition over competence. It is no longer a prosecuting authority – it is a reputational liability.
And what about justice? What of the victims of grand corruption, sexual abuse, and industrial-scale looting? They remain empty-handed. The Guptas are still abroad. Koko struts unscathed. Omotoso’s trial limps into oblivion. South Africans who once believed the NPA might restore order and accountability are now left with bitter disillusionment.
Batohi’s legacy is not one of restored integrity but of reputational haemorrhage. Her term has been defined not by victories, but by public judicial rebukes – and a near-total erosion of institutional trust.
With less than a year remaining, the damage she leaves behind is profound: a crippled prosecutorial body lurching between high-profile bungles and chronic dysfunction.
This is not merely an administrative failure. It is a full-blown crisis of legality and public trust.
If the NPA were a human body, the diagnosis would be septicaemia – a toxic bloodstream, self-infected by recklessness, incompetence, and an utter disregard for due process. And like any untreated infection, it threatens paralysis… or death.
The verdict on Batohi is in. The only question that remains is whether South Africa can still save its prosecuting authority from total collapse. That will require more than a change in leadership. It demands a ruthless overhaul, institutional clarity, and above all, accountability.
Anything less and we remain spectators in this farce of justice denied.
- Mdakane is a senior reporter
