Investigating directorate (ID) head Hermione Cronje resigned last week in frustration, despondent at a “skills catastrophe” in an organisation with few staff able to prosecute anyone involved in state capture or grand corruption.
So said National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) sources close to Cronje, who described her despair at being unable to make an impact 30 months into the job because her directorate did not have enough quality staff to do its work.
The last straw, said one NPA insider, was a strategic planning workshop held after the July riots. On the agenda was whether the NPA had enough skills, as well as a skills audit. The audit had been mooted by the national director of public prosecutions, Shamila Batohi, when she was appointed three years ago, but has still not been done.
In an address to staff after her resignation, a “devastated” Cronje said the space for her to make an impact “had closed” and she promised she would help continue the fight against state capture from outside the organisation.
“The NPA’s leadership is very out of touch with what is happening in the courts. It’s like they are living in a parallel universe where conviction rates are trotted out to fuel their comfort and belief that they are doing well, but they are not,” said one insider.
In an address to staff after her resignation, a 'devastated' [Hermione] Cronje said the space for her to make an impact 'had closed'
Cronje’s allies say she believes the NPA remains beset by state capture, with incompetents still in place after having been given senior jobs in exchange for their pliancy. In addition, senior prosecutors found to have done wrong, such as those fingered for pressing racketeering charges against former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Johan Booysen, are still in the NPA’s employ and assigned to corruption cases. Only one of these prosecutors has left and none of the others has been taken to task.
While Cronje’s reasons for resigning mostly concern a shortage of resources and capacity, Batohi accepted her resignation following media criticism that the ID has yet to successfully prosecute a state capture case. It also followed threats of litigation by Accountability Now to compel the state to prosecute high-profile corruption cases, as well as a letter from Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) lamenting the slow pace of state capture prosecutions.
This week, the NPA told parliament that the ID has 17 permanent staff. Altogether there are 120 people attached to the unit, but these staff members are essentially borrowed from the under-capacitated Hawks, contractors and other agencies.
“She couldn’t recruit the people she wanted because the pay scales in government are set and she cannot compete with the private sector. But she didn’t trust the people she had, and there is a lot of talent there, but she didn’t have confidence in them,” said an NPA insider allied to Batohi.
Another NPA insider said Cronje was working to bring large cases to court with many accused, as opposed to quick wins easily gained by carving the matters up and prosecuting a few state capture players at a time. The latter approach would, insiders said, have sent a message that the ID was doing its work and that the battle was being won.
But Cronje’s allies insist that she was in favour of such an approach and the recent case involving Nulane Investments, owned by Gupta lieutenant Iqbal Sharma — who was charged recently along with the Guptas — was one such example. Another was the corruption case of former ANC MP Vincent Smith and Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi.
Another Cronje ally said she pushed to have criminal cases launched against those who looted Transnet and Eskom, but had to rely on prosecutors who were overwhelmed, lacked confidence and were unable to crystallise matters and bring them before a court.
“As a leader, you need to be strategic and not operational. She was caught up in the detail of the cases. If you’re too embedded in the detail, very few things are going to move. She also didn’t trust her people to do those things for her and she was terrified of making mistakes.”
One thing even her detractors credit her for is success in obtaining restraint orders against the assets of alleged state capture actors, such as the recent preservation of Sharma’s multimillion rand Sandton home and the restraint on a Gupta private jet and two Gupta homes, one in Saxonwold, Johannesburg, and another in Constantia, Cape Town. If successful, this week’s restraint application against the Guptas’ Optimum Coal Mine will be a R2.2bn feather in her cap.
“But the public expected orange overalls,” said an NPA source. “She needed to chase crooks and make arrests. Her biggest gripe was that she didn’t have the resources she needed to execute on that mandate. Instead, she became very personally involved and couldn’t maintain a balance between operations and strategy.”
Other NPA insiders said Cronje was isolated and had no allies at the NPA, leaving her “without support”.
“She had a lot of fights with operations people in charge of budget allocations and resources,” one said. “She didn’t win herself any friends.”
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