New NDPP Mothibi faces tough job of fixing NPA

ASKED a direct question by the CNN award-winning journalist, Christiane Amanpour, on whether he has “any information that might implicate President Zuma in any acts of corruption’, the late Pravin Gordhan responded matter-of-factly.

- PROF. SIPHO SEEPE

PROF. SIPHO SEEPE Seepe is a Higher Education and Training expert.

“No, I don’t have any personal information, but as I said, there are all sorts of suggestions not just about the president”.Interestingly and embarrassingly so, Amanpour asked the most basic question that had escaped South Africa’s journalistic fraternity. Hoodwinked by the so-called state capture narrative, the media fraternity eagerly lapped up everything coming out of Gordhan’s mouth.

In the end, Gordhan was exposed as nothing more than a petty, jealous, and probably racist state capture propagandist. It didn’t help at the time that, for the media fraternity, South Africans were divided into saints and demons. Anyone with a remote connection to the former President Jacob Zuma was considered a demon.

The likes of the former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane were routinely targeted. The Constitutional Court stopped this infectious conduct in its tracks.

In a majority judgment penned by Justice Madlanga, the apex court remarked: “There appears to be a developing trend of seeking personal costs orders in most, if not all, matters involving the Public Protector... with no consideration whatsoever of special circumstances that justified the order.... And in the instant matter, the High Court - in its conclusions — has carefully selected and used epithets and particular nouns that are suited to awards of personal costs orders, but there is not a scintilla of evidence to support those epithets and particular nouns and, therefore, the conclusions. Thus, the conclusions simply cannot stand up to scrutiny.”

Justice Madlanga concluded by pointing out that “courts must be wary not to fall into the trap of thinking that the Public Protector is fair game for automatic personal costs awards.”