The NPA has denied claims that its eleventh-hour decision to pull a senior prosecutor from the trial of an alleged KwaZulu-Natal rhino-poaching "kingpin" was akin to sabotage.
The allegation of meddling was made by anti-poaching activist Jamie Joseph after state prosecutor Yuri Gangai was removed from the case against Dumisani Gwala and two others who are facing 10 charges mostly relating to the illegal purchase and possession of rhino horn.
On October 9, Gangai was due to travel to Zululand to make a recusal application to have the magistrate removed due to allegations - published in the Sunday Times and on Joseph's Saving The Wild website in July - that bribes were paid to stall the case.
Gangai was told the night before that he was being replaced.
The three new prosecutors who replaced Gangai did not go ahead with the recusal application against the magistrate - a move Joseph described as suspicious.
"By replacing Advocate Gangai, is the NPA sabotaging the case?" she wrote on her website two weeks ago.
Gwala - whose network was at one time alleged to have been responsible for about 80% of all poached horn in the province - and co-accused Wiseman Makeba and Aubrey Dlamini were arrested on December 18 2014. Gwala and Makeba are out on bail and Dlamini is in custody.
The case has been postponed at least 17 times since their arrest. It will now start in May, 40 months after the arrest.
The NPA confirmed this week that Gangai was replaced and that the new prosecutors did not go ahead with the recusal, but denied any wrongdoing.
KwaZulu-Natal director of public prosecutions Advocate Moipone Noko said the recusal wasn't lodged "because the case, as it stood then, had neither evidence nor valid grounds to base a recusal of the magistrate application on".
