MIKE SILUMA | Idac debacle provides elementary lesson for South Africa

Perhaps it’s a consequence of our exasperation with endemic corruption, especially in our public institutions, but we have become very prone to seeing our world in binary terms — as either black or white, inhabited by saintly heroes or incorrigible devils, with nothing in between.

A case in point is the public response to the stupefying revelations about the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) at the Madlanga commission. Thanks to its commissioners and evidence leaders, who are known to take no prisoners, we have been led into the darkest recesses of the unit and exposed to the shocking failings of its leadership.

As its name suggests, the Idac is meant to be the elite corruption-busting weapon in the country’s crime-fighting arsenal. Yet in evidence before the commission it has been shown to be a site of serious incompetence, its leadership standing accused of acting unethically, and even corruptly.

Even if the Idac had reasonable and justifiable grounds to act against members of another state entity, we should still demand that it set an example by playing by the rulebook

At the heart of this week’s proceedings were allegations that the Idac had concocted evidence to arrest and charge several senior crime-intelligence officers — as well as a civilian, Dineo Mokwele — with fraud and corruption. It turned out Mokwele’s “crime” was simply to apply for a police job that was legitimately open to private citizens as well.

Apart from failing to grasp the requirements of the job, the Idac leadership was shown to have misled the courts with a claim that, among other things, Mokwele was unqualified for the position — a charge exposed at the commission as false.

Under relentless questioning, the Idac’s hitherto revered head, advocate Andrea Johnson, turned out not to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Her opening gambit of claiming a right not to incriminate herself would on its own have raised eyebrows. What was it about her conduct or the Idac’s activities she did not want the commission to know?

Then she admitted to supporting Mokwele’s arrest on the baseless suspicion that, once she was in the police’s employ, she might become part of a syndicate bent on looting crime intelligence funds. This is a mindset first revealed by Johnson’s top investigator, Brian Padayachee, the week before.

And so the nation got to know that the elite organisation was staffed by people who, instead of being possessed of superior crime detection skills, moonlight as sangomas who sniff out crimes not yet committed — and then arresting and charging suspects in advance.

Among their other infractions, Johnson and Padayachee were also shown to have improperly shared information with another of the commission’s people of interest, Maj-Gen Feroz Khan, with whom Johnson is friendly. Commissioner Sandile Khumalo may have accurately summarised the week’s revelations when he put it to Johnson that the Idac had engaged in a “serious abuse of power”. At that point, Johnson became the worst advert the unit could have wished for.

Based on the week’s revelations, one would have expected the general consensus to be that, when it comes to the Idac, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Yet, as is typical of our polarised society, which believes only in heroes and villains, the Idac debacle gave rise to bitterly divided public opinion.

Some, including individuals in the media, have sought to cast the Madlanga commission as part of a diabolical plot by bad people to destroy what we have until now believed to be a crucial institution in the nation’s fight against graft. Such persons have drawn parallels between the goings-on at the commission and the demise of the Scorpions when Jacob Zuma became president 18 years ago. According to this view, Johnson is an innocent victim of the piece.

The unmasking of the rot at the Idac was not initiated by some corrupt politician or mafia boss with a nefarious agenda. It emerged from the mandate given to the commission by President Cyril Ramaphosa after Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s startling claims last July that the criminal justice system had been infiltrated by the criminal underworld.

If the questioning and holding to account of the Idac and its leader were indeed part of an anti-Idac scheme, as seems to have been implied, this would surely make criminals of Madlanga and his fellow commissioners. What is more, the president himself would be an accomplice in a treasonous conspiracy. That is plainly a preposterous proposition.

Of course, it would be naive to discount the notorious rivalry between state security agencies such as the police and the Idac, which forms part of the backdrop to the commission’s activities. But even if the Idac had reasonable and justifiable grounds to act against members of another state entity, we should still demand that it set an example by playing by the rulebook. The country’s top anticorruption agency can never be justified in acting criminally itself in carrying out its mandate. It cannot suck the country into a world where the end justifies the means, where fair is foul and foul is fair.

It does not help matters that this week Ramaphosa was compelled to reinstate Gauteng director of public prosecutions Andrew Chauke after the Nkabinde commission effectively rejected an allegation he was unfit to hold office. The charge had been laid by none other than Shamila Batohi, the former head of the National Prosecuting Authority, under which the Idac falls. It will be recalled that Batohi stormed out of the Nkabinde commission when her case was subjected to deeper scrutiny.

The elementary lesson here is that, though we have established good institutions for the benefit of the country (in this case, to fight crime and corruption), those bodies are at the end of the day staffed and led by mere mortals who as such are not incorruptible.

It is fine for us to adore heroes and detest scoundrels. But at all times we must be guided by the facts and the evidence, and eschew entertaining sacred cow untouchables. These days call for constant vigilance.