Publications
Partners
The new national director of public prosecutions Shamila Batohi gets a mingy budget allocation to match the unambitious targets set by her predecessor Shaun Abrahams.
The National Prosecuting Authority receives its budget from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.
The 2019 Budget document Estimates of National Expenditure shows that the NPA will receive a budgeted R3.1 billion rising to R3.6 billion over the medium term.
There is no additional allocation for the Investigating Directorate that will drive the anti-corruption prosecutions Batohi wants to undertake.
The reason for the mingy allocation is that the former NDPP Shaun Abrahams set out an anaemic work plan for his team and he failed to spend allocated funds even through prosecutorial outcomes are poor.
While the estimates of the cost of state capture and corruption are at R100 billion and upwards, according to various studies and commissions of inquiry now underway, the budget documents show that Abrahams had no intention of making any real headway on fighting corruption.
In a section on objectives, the NPA only set itself this goal in asset forfeiture: “Increasing the value of recoveries…through the proceeds of crime and government losses, from a projected R2.5 bn in 2018/19 to R6.5bn in 2021/22.”
Abrahams also set out this objective to recover the following proceeds from acts of corruption: “Increasing the value of recoveries in terms of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act from a projected R5 bn in 2018/19 to R8 bn in 2021/22.”
This shows that Abrahams and the leadership of the NPA had no real intention of driving an anti-corruption agenda through prosecution.
Batohi, according to reports, has been given the mandate to prosecute corruption and she has said that a key priority of her term as NDPP will be to prosecute cases of state capture.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said in his speech that, “Over the past couple of years South Africa has been grappling with corruption. We must root this out. National Treasury and the Department of Justice will work swiftly to support the establishment of a new Investigating Directorate in the NPA.”
The budget for this directorate which will be at the forefront of the corruption investigations and prosecutions will be run from Batohi’s office but there is no sign of a budget for it in this week’s document.
