Khasho August September 2010 - National Prosecuting Authority

6 NPA NewsAdv Simelane talks…Nomilo MpondoOn 24 August 2010, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Adv Menzi Simelane took part as a guestspeaker in a public lecture that was organised by the National Library of South Africa. The public lectureprovided a platform to educate the public about transformation within the NPA and its role in society.The topic of the day was “Transformation of the judiciary inSouth Africa from 1994 to 2010”.Adv Simelane talked on a variety of topics, some of whichincluded the following:• Representivity in lower and higher courts;• Transformation of processes to improve and fasttrack service delivery;• Transformation of legal institutions such as theSAPS, ICD, PSC, NPA and others;• Sensitive traditional customs.On the issue of representivity in courts, Adv Simelane said alot of work in gender representivity has been done butacknowledged that more must still be done.Coming closer home, he said the NPA needed to make acontinuous assessment of its work and processes whilstimplementing the law. He said if the NPA failed to assess itswork, such failure would impact negatively on the rights ofcitizens. “Freedom without rights is not freedom”, he said.He reiterated the NPA’s position on plea and sentenceagreements. He said he strongly believed that the courtsshould mostly be utilised for difficult and complex cases. Incases where it was difficult to crack the syndicate for evidencegathering, plea bargains were always a better tool to sourceevidence. He said when courts were busy dealing with casesthat they should not be dealing with, someone was beingdenied justice.His speech also focused on the ‘rights of the child’ asenshrined in the Child Justice Act, which was promulgated on1 April 2010. He said any child in conflict with the law wouldbe dealt with by way of diversion, especially if they were firstoffenders. That would give a child a second chance to be abetter person.Transformation would not be complete without looking at reallife examples. That necessitated Adv Simelane to delve on theongoing challenges that are encountered in prosecuting crimesrelated to traditional customs such as ‘ukuthwalwa’ - meaningarranged marriages and ‘ulwaluko’- the tradition of initiatingboys to manhood.He confined his discussion pertaining to these two subjects toLusikisiki in the Eastern Cape where these practices aremostly prevalent. Adv Simelane said the custom of‘ukuthwalwa’ in its original form never involved minors as ithappened today. He said even traditional leaders rejected theway the custom was being practiced. The problem was evenexacerbated by lack of cooperation from parents and thepolice, which resulted in some cases falling into cracks.He said the same applied to the custom of ‘ulwaluko’, whichwas not applied as it should. He said the role of the NPAwhere an initiate died as a result of improper application of thecustom was to institute a charge of murder or attemptedmurder and assault with the intent to cause grievous bodilyharm.Advocate Menzi SimelaneNational Director of Public Prosecutions“Transformation of the NPA is necessary in the context of allthese examples,” he said.Professionalism, Integrity, Service Excellence, Accountability and Credibility