While the justice system burns, Ramaphosa still procrastinates

The President has moved unusually fast to appoint a judicial commission on the Mkhwanazi allegations, but a long inquiry will only delay the urgent action that everyone knows is needed. By Professor Balthazar

- Professor Balthazar

By his usual standards of vacillation, President Cyril Ramaphosa acted with lightning speed in appointing a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations made by the KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, about the state of the criminal justice system.

To be sure, Ramaphosa should be commended for appointing Acting Deputy Chief Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga to chair a commission mandated to investigate what the President referred to as “the infiltration of law enforcement intelligence and associated institutions within the criminal justice system by criminal syndicates”.

The country could not have wished for a more appropriately qualified judge to deal with this absolutely critical issue, supported by two senior counsel, advocates Sesi Baloyi SC and Sandile Khumalo SC.

And yet questions remain unanswered.

In May 2024, Ramaphosa received a report by Professor Firoz Cachalia (now to be acting police minister), who at that time was chair of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council. Ramaphosa did not release the report, nor has there been any tangible evidence that he has actively engaged with it.

There was a further report by Professor Sandy Africa dealing with what was referred to as the “attempted insurrection” in July 2021, in which the police were in the public eye for their inability to deal with looting and lawlessness that went on for days.

Then there was the monumental set of reports of the commission of inquiry into State Capture authored by then Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, which, apart from ritual incantations of renewal by the ANC, has hardly received a meaningful response from the President with regard to numerous politically connected figures who received critical attention from the chief justice.