Busi Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership SA (BLSA), says three years ago the then new boss of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Shamila Batohi, spurned offers of assistance from organised business, but that this is an attitude the country can no longer afford.
“The consequences of not prosecuting cases arising from the Zondo commission will be dire because all these people implicated in the state capture report will be walking around with impunity.” The hollowed-out and incapacitated NPA is in no condition to prosecute them without considerable outside help, Mavuso says.
“I don't think we can be naive to think we can solve the problems we are facing as a country on our own. Too much damage has been done by the state capture project. There is a lot that we need to get right, and we don't have time.”
On Monday, Business Unity SA, the country's apex business organisation, requested an engagement with the NPA “so that we can find out from Batohi how we can come to the party”, she says.
Organised business is ready and willing to make “a concerted effort to provide the NPA with a mechanism to urgently prepare cases to prosecute those identified in the Zondo report”.
BLSA hosted a meeting for Batohi at their offices soon after she became national director of the NPA in February 2019. “We said you're coming into a very dysfunctional institution that is not capacitated. We know you're going to need support; what support do you require?”
Batohi said she was worried about bringing business to the party and what that would look like in the public domain. “She was worried about the narrative that the NPA is captured by business. She made it clear she was aware of the politics within the organisation, and the trust deficit between business and government.”
She was afraid that if she brought in organised business the narrative would be that the NPA was being captured by white monopoly capital. Big business had been very vocal about calling for former president Jacob Zuma's head and for the setting up of a state capture commission, and were getting a lot of backlash at the time.
“The narrative was that big business was just angry that after the apartheid era they were not eating,” says Mavuso. “It was an era for a different constituency to eat, and because big business was not benefiting from the state capture project, that's why we came out and were now pursuing our own agenda.”
She says they've heard nothing from Batohi or the NPA since reaching out to her three years ago.
“I'm hoping her views would have changed about how she can work with business. I think by now she will have realised the importance of the need to bring the resources, to bring the private sector, to bring the expertise and to bring the capacity into the NPA.
“I'm hoping that now we have moved along because we are even talking about private prosecutions now, and you shouldn't have to do private prosecutions when you have the NPA.
“From where I'm sitting it would be easier for us to take our resources and funding and give it to the NPA, and have the NPA actually be the ones that prosecute.
“The private sector should not have to do a job that government has to do, otherwise why do you need a government?”
In spite of getting the cold shoulder, organised business has repeated its offer to Batohi, “to say that we'd like to see how we can capacitate the NPA so that they can bring these people who have undermined our country to justice”.
Unlike Batohi, the former head of the NPA's Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU), Willie Hofmeyr, was receptive to offers from organised business to help capacitate his unit.
Business organised training in forensic investigation for about 80 AFU investigators. Their relationship with the unit, which by December last year had seized R3.7bn of assets related to state capture, is continuing.
“When the head of such a unit is open-minded about working with a varied set of stakeholders to get them to perform at the level they should be performing at then you see progress,” says Mavuso.
So shouldn't they have tried harder to persuade Batohi to accept their help?
“Do you really think it's the job of business to convince the NPA, or any government entity, to work with us?”
She says they've been clear that what they're offering to the NPA is a blank cheque. “We are not giving this offer of assistance with terms and conditions; we are not saying we want to be involved in who you hire or what prosecutors you bring to the table.
“We're not saying you're going to have to use legal minds from business. We don't want to meddle with your processes or systems. We are merely saying we need you to give us guidance. We know you need support, you need help. Just tell us how we can help.”
It will be for Batohi to decide how she defines that help so that the narrative is not that the private sector is capturing the NPA, she says.
“She will tell us on what terms she will accept our assistance.”
Mavuso says there is no triumphalism involved in the offer of organised business to help capacitate the NPA or any other public sector entity. “It must never be forgotten that the private sector is complicit in what has been happening. The state capture project would not have reached the levels it did if the private sector had not been complicit.”
Organised business doesn't want to capacitate the NPA to root out corruption only in the public sector, but in its own backyard, the private sector, as well, she says.
“We as BLSA are not trying to sweep any ethical breaches by the private sector under the carpet.
“The same way we want to see Jacob Zuma in orange overalls behind bars, [former Steinhoff CEO] Markus Jooste should be right behind him.
“The NPA needs to pursue both with maximum speed and whatever help they can get.”
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