Resetting and renewing Idac won’t solve SA’s corruption crisis

The “reset and renew” medicine Andy Mothibi, head of the National Prosecuting Authority since February 2026, has suggested for his institution’s imploded Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) is no cure for the multiple organised crime and serious corruption challenges facing South Africa.

Mothibi participated in Daily Maverick’s The Gathering 2026 panel of 11 September under the banner, Crime the Beloved Country”.

It is deeply inappropriate that a mere directorate within the NPA, which is what Idac is, should have responsibility for dealing with these twin scourges and the scoundrels involved.

Moreover, the creation of Idac in 2024 was carried out in defiance of binding rulings made by the Constitutional Court in the Glenister litigation.

The President ignored the timely warning to desist given by Accountability Now and proceeded to sign the Bill into law on the eve of losing the parliamentary majority that had ensured its passage.

What is needed urgently is an adequately independent anti-corruption body made up of specialists trained as such, standing alone in a single entity, with both structural and operational independence and possessing resources that are guaranteed in a secure working environment.

These attributes, laid down by the courts, have become known as the Stirs criteria.

Idac enjoys none of these attributes. It is constitutionally located and legislatively structured in such a way that no amount of “resetting and renewing” can possibly cure the inherent defects in the composition of Idac as a component of the NPA.

Doomed to fail

While Idac remains a directorate within the NPA, it is doomed to fail again and again, just as it did within 18 months of starting out in succession to the Investigating Directorate, a presidentially proclaimed stop-gap measure dating back to 2020.

This sorry fate for Idac was preordained because the whole of the NPA is subject to the minister of justice having “final responsibility over” it in terms of Section 179 of the Constitution. The minister also has the power to veto prosecution policy, and her director general is the accounting officer of the whole of the NPA, including Idac.

These features are not the material from which “an adequately independent body”, to use the court’s terminology from Glenister Three, can possibly emerge, irrespective of the amounts of resetting and renewing.

Attempting a “reset and renewal” of Idac without paying strict attention to the requirements of the law as laid down, in binding fashion, by the Constitutional Court, and summarised above, is doomed to fail.

It would, in expectation of victory, be akin to fitting an ancient VW Beetle with fat tyres and a throaty exhaust system before entering it in a flat race with the mint-condition Lambos, McLarens and Ferraris favoured by those gangsters currently under scrutiny by the Madlanga Commission.

That commission, and an ad hoc committee of the National Assembly, are investigating the startling, if not scary, complaints made by Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, KZN chief of police, in his dramatic 6 July 2025 media briefing. Until they both furnish final reports, all thought of resetting and renewing Idac should be held in abeyance.

As matters stand, the way forward is actually in the hands of the minister of justice because she has to concur in any new policy decisions that the leadership of the NPA may happen upon in their “reset and renew” endeavours.

This legal position exists because the wording of Section 179(5)(a) of the Constitution ties the hands of Mothibi to that which enjoys “the concurrence of the Cabinet member responsible for the administration of justice”.

In effect, the minister has a veto power over any reset or renewal that the leaders of the NPA may devise or desire. Unless and until Parliament amends the law on the final responsibility over the NPA which the minister enjoys, she remains, in her capacity as the responsible member of the national Cabinet, at the apex of the system of criminal justice administration in South Africa.

Half-baked outcome

Had proper attention been given to the words of the Constitutional Court in the Glenister litigation, a “body outside the control of the executive” would have emerged after Parliament was sent back to the drawing board in Glenister Two back in 2011.

The half-baked outcome of Glenister Three (which followed the mere tweaking of the Hawks legislation by Parliament after Glenister Two and then further tweaking by the court itself in Glenister Three) still sets the standard at that of “an adequately independent” single body. The opening words of the majority judgment in Glenister Three, penned by then Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, spell these legal requirements out clearly:

“Corruption is rife in this country, and stringent measures are required to contain this malady before it graduates into something terminal. We are in one accord that South Africa needs an agency dedicated to the containment and eventual eradication of the scourge of corruption. We also agree that the entity must enjoy adequate structural and operational independence to deliver effectively and efficiently on its core mandate.”

Abysmal Hawks

The revised Hawks have been an abysmal failure at the anti-corruption mandate that was tweaked by the Constitutional Court itself in 2014. Twelve years is more than enough time to show that the Hawks are not up to the task of dealing with grand corruption and organised crime of the kind chronicled by Caryn Dolley in her new book, The Untouchables. Her account of the situation shows that the Chief Justice was right to call corruption “rife”.

Remember, he was opining before State Capture was a topic of braai-fire conversation of the country.

The setting up of Idac is no more than an entirely unconstitutional tacit acknowledgement by the government that the Hawks are not making the grade in the war on corruption and organised crime. The evidence before the twin inquiries currently under way confirms the inadequacy of the Hawks as corruption-busters.

The thefts of seized drugs, facilitation of arming gangsters by SAPS personnel, dismissals, resignations and suspensions of key personnel confirm this assessment of the inadequacy of the Hawks, who do good work on other priority crimes that fall within the wider mandate they have been given. A Stirs-compliant body is yet to see the light of day in South Africa, which explains why the twin threats of grand corruption and organised crime pose an existential threat to constitutional democracy under the rule of law.

A Geneva-based South African researcher, Dr Mark Shaw, who gave evidence to the Madlanga Commission on 3 September 2026, shares the view that the prevalence of organised crime and serious corruption in South Africa does indeed pose an existential threat of this kind. A summary of and commentary on his evidence to the commission has been published by Biznews.com.

Shaw’s evidence, in full and as summarised, plus the report on which he based his testimony, should be required reading for anyone contemplating a “reset and renew” for the problems posed by the implosion of Idac.

Mothibi’s task

In particular, Andy Mothibi and his NPA management team have to look deep within themselves and assess their commitment to the rule of law and to the Constitution. The NPA is bound by the decisions in the Glenister cases, yet it hardly lifts a finger to implement them.

As a newcomer to the criminal justice administration, Mothibi is well placed to take the evidence of Shaw to heart and to place it in the context of the existing machinery of state that, irregularly so, requires Idac to be the lead institution in the existential battle against gangsters and other corrupt elements.

(Remember, the Special Investigating Unit, which Mothibi led before he was appointed NDPP last February, is not part of the criminal justice administration. Its function is to collect purloined assets of the state and state-owned enterprises on proclaimed instructions received from the President. Accordingly, the SIU need only work to the civil standard of proof, which explains, at least in part, its superior track record to that of the NPA, Idac and the Hawks, all of whom work to the more exacting criminal law standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”).

What the law and the country require, urgently so, is an entirely superior body to Idac, whether reset, renewed or neither, that has the capacity to fulfil the mandate that has been unfulfilled since the demise of the Scorpions in 2009.

The calibre of personnel, the institutional integrity, the commitment to upholding the rule of law and the need for recruitment of personnel of the kind who do not find working for the NPA or Idac or even the Hawks an attractive proposition, can never be the product of a reset or a renewal.

A whole new way of recruiting staff, testing their integrity and training them in the skills required (remember the Scorpions received instruction from both the FBI and Scotland Yard) is needed, all the while paying due regard to the minority judgment in Glenister Three on appointment procedures, penned by Justice Edwin Cameron.

While she was still NDPP, Shamila Batohi remarked that the rule of law in South Africa is in the ICU on life support.

It is high time to address the causes of this sorry state of affairs. Constitutionally compliant anti-corruption and anti-organised crime machinery of state is the first step on the road to improved health of the rule of law in South Africa.

Debating the “Breytenbach Bills” urgently is indicated. These are private member’s Bills pending in Parliament, sponsored by the Chief Whip of the DA. The debate is urgently needed; the Bills envisage a new Chapter Nine Anti-Corruption body that is both constitutionally compliant and will be equipped to deal with organised crime too. Not a moment too soon. DM