Why I suspended Pikoli – Thabo Mbeki

Thabo Mbeki suspended former prosecutions head Vusi Pikoli because he put national security at risk, the former President claimed last week. A BDlive report notes that as allegations of political interference around the National Prosecuting Authority persist, it is a widely held view that the interference began during Mbeki’s administration. But in the fifth of a series of letters from the former head of state, Mbeki seeks to counter this ‘narrative’. He refers to two specific ‘charges’ – his alleged intervention to frustrate the arrest of former Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi and the allegation that he used the NPA to frustrate the political ambitions of President Jacob Zuma. However, in his letter, he deals in detail only with the arrest of Selebi. Pikoli has maintained that the real reason he was suspended was to prevent his imminent arrest of Selebi – an unlawful incursion into prosecutorial independence, he said. However, Mbeki says: ‘We argued with Pikoli that given the deeply poisoned relations between the (Scorpions) and the SAPS, any attempt to execute the warrants (of arrest) would inevitably result in a violent, armed conflict.’ He said he asked Pikoli to give him two weeks – to take ‘steps’, which would allow the Scorpions to go ahead ‘without plunging the country into a very serious national security crisis’. But Pikoli ‘resolutely rejected this proposal and refused all persuasion’. He gave the President only one week. ‘As President, I had my own solemn duty to help guarantee the country’s national security’. The only recourse was to suspend him, Mbeki said.