Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The ANC’s peace and security committee will meet at the party’s headquarters today, ahead of Cabinet’s expected approval this week of a controversial bill disbanding the Scorpions and next Monday’s release of the full Khampepe report.

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

It is understood that the General Laws Amendment Bill is expected to be approved by Cabinet tomorrow and will be tabled in Parliament soon afterwards.

This will pave the way for President Thabo Mbeki to release the long-awaited Khampepe report into the location of the Scorpions, which has been kept under wraps since February 2006, except for an edited version of its recommendations.

The commission’s recommendations included that the Scorpions should remain within the National Prosecuting Authority and not relocated to the police as urged by its detractors.

However, Judge Sisi Khampepe recommended that the unit’s prosecutors should fall under the justice department, while Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula should be politically accountable for the unit’s investigators.

This was approved by Cabinet, but draft legislation to put this into effect took months to finalise and was eventually shelved after the ANC’s national conference resolved in December that the unit should rather be disbanded and its investigators transferred to the police.

Mbeki will gazette the full Khampepe report on May 5, a day before MPs return for the second term of the parliamentary year.

Mbeki told Parliament in February that the elite crime fighting unit would be merged with the police’s organised crime unit to form a new super body, although it would not be allowed to initiate investigations as was the case with the Scorpions, and would only have cases referred to it.

The bill will be processed by the National Assembly’s committees on justice and safety and security – sitting jointly – according to ANC parliamentary caucus spokesman Khotso Khumalo.

Public hearings would be held, he said.

Yesterday, DA leader Helen Zille said her party’s Promotion of Access to Information Act application to the presidency had resulted in the release of the entire Khampepe Report.

“From what we know of it, the report sets out the case to retain the Scorpions in the NPA. Its publication will make it even harder for the ANC to justify dissolving the unit,” Zille said.