There is an obvious need to put together a crack team to investigate and prosecute criminal cases emerging from evidence before the Madlanga commission which is investigating criminality, political interference and corruption within SA’s criminal justice system.
All too often, commissions uncover serious malfeasance with little consequence for those implicated.
The Zondo commission which investigated state capture is one such example.
Far too few powerful figures have faced any penalties whatsoever after its findings.
But, in the case of the Madlanga commission, there are powerful individuals within the criminal justice system itself that have been exposed as being profoundly complicit in the crime and corruption that the system should combat.
It is vital that individuals and syndicates responsible for this be successfully prosecuted if public trust in the criminal justice system is ever to be restored.
One of those tasked with this important job is senior state advocate Nceba Ntelwa from the Eastern Cape.
Sister publication, The Herald, reported last week that despite being removed as prosecutor from two high-profile Eastern Cape cases and facing an internal investigation for his actions in at least one of them, Ntelwa is part of the task team dealing with matters stemming from the Madlanga commission.
He is leading the prosecutorial charge against suspended Ekurhuleni metro police deputy chief Julius Mkhwanazi and city manager Kagiso Lerutla,
From about 2019 to 2021, when a judge ordered his removal from the case, Ntelwa also led the failed prosecution against televangelist Timothy Omotoso and his co-accused who were last year acquitted of dozens of charges of rape and human trafficking.
Someone that a judge has suggested is either “extremely incompetent or dishonest” does not fit that bill
Judge Irma Schoeman had harsh words for Ntelwa both during the trial and her judgment that incorporated findings of unethical conduct, incompetence and lying to the court.
This included an effective admission by Ntelwa in an affidavit that he did not know the legal definition of rape.
The judge was moved to comment in her judgment that it was “inconceivable that a prosecutor with 14 years’ experience, that is involved in a case where rape is one of the crimes … does not know what the definition of rape is”.
She said he was either “extremely incompetent or dishonest”.
He was also later replaced in the R170m Fort Hare corruption case after a reported six-month delay in obtaining a certificate allowing the state to proceed with racketeering charges against the accused.
The team to prosecute the powerful people in the criminal justice system, who have so deliberately set about undermining that which they should promote, should include the NPA’s experienced elite who are themselves above reproach.
Someone that a judge has suggested is either “extremely incompetent or dishonest” does not fit that bill.
Daily Dispatch
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