Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The controversial bill that will signal the death knell of the Scorpions is expected to be approved by the cabinet tomorrow and finally tabled in parliament ahead of MPs returning from their constituency break next week.

It will be accompanied on Monday by the long-awaited release of the full Khampepe Commission report, which the presidency has kept under wraps since February 2006.

The DA believes that its publication will make it even harder for the ANC to justify dissolving the unit.

The presidency’s decision to make the full Khampepe report public follows its statement in late March that it would do so, but only after the General Laws Amendment Bill – which deals with the disbanding of the Scorpions – had been tabled in parliament.

The presidency initially refused the DA application’s to have the report made public, saying it would compromise the country’s “defence, security and international relations”.

The report would now be published in the Government Gazette no. 31014 of May 5, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad said.

DA leader Helen Zille yesterday said the report would be a crucial source of information for MPs and citizens during the legislative process to decide on the Scorpions’ future.

“From what we know of it, the report sets out the case to retain the Scorpions in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).”

The ANC had been unable to motivate why the disbanding of the Scorpions would be in the public interest, she said

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe had conceded in a meeting with her that the ruling party was motivated to disband the unit because of high-profile investigations into ANC members, Zille said

The ANC’s national working committee (NWC) in March proposed a controversial strategy that would see the public hearings in parliament packed with submissions by those in favour of the party’s policy on disbanding the unit.

The ANC claims the Scorpions is full of former apartheid policemen.

Judge Sisi Khampepe recommended in February 2006 that the Scorpions be retained in the NPA and not relocated to the police.

However, she did recommend that the justice minister be politically accountable for the Scorpions’ prosecutors, while her safety and security counterpart should be accountable for the unit’s investigators.

This was accepted by the cabinet, but the ANC’s national conference in December last year put paid to that, calling for the disbanding of the unit and its relocation to the police.

President Thabo Mbeki announced in February that the unit would be merged into a super unit with the police’s organised crime unit.

The ANC’s peace and security committee was to meet today at the party’s headquarters to discuss the Scorpion’s future and the impact of disbanding it.

The committee, headed by former SANDF chief Siphiwe Nyanda, will include the chairmen of the parliamentary committees that will jointly process the bill, which the ANC now hopes will be law by July.

ANC parliamentary caucus spokesperson Khotso Khumalo said that public hearings would be held.

He denied allegations that the NWC would try to pack the hearing with people in favour of disbanding the Scorpions.

The party merely wanted its members, alliance partners and NGOs to also make their voices heard during the public hearings, as was the case with the bills on cross-boundary municipalities, Khumalo said.