Friday marked the state’s unconditional withdrawal of corruption charges against head of South African Police Service crime intelligence Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo, Brig Dineo Mokwele and their co-accused in the Pretoria magistrate’s court.
They faced fraud and corruption charges related to the alleged irregular appointment of Mokwele to a senior position in the crime intelligence unit without proper qualifications.
The case is not merely the collapse of one prosecution. It raises fundamental questions about how the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) investigates, evaluates evidence and exercises the extraordinary powers entrusted to it.
In July, national director of public prosecutions Andy Mothibi signed a provisional withdrawal of the case against Khumalo, Mokwele and other senior crime intelligence officials before charges were formally withdrawn in court on Friday.
This ordeal has taken a toll on some of the accused. Speaking after her court appearance on Friday, Mokwele said she entered the public service with the belief that her skills and experience will contribute to nation-building.
“Instead I found myself being arrested, prosecuted and portrayed in a manner that is inconsistent with who I am and the life I have built.”
Watching my name become national news while I was still trying to understand what was happening was devastating.
— Brig Dineo Mokwele
She said being arrested and being driven to court behind a police van was not an experience she would wish even on her worst enemy.
“Watching my name become national news while I was still trying to understand what was happening was devastating.”
The withdrawal came after devastating evidence at the Madlanga commission exposed weaknesses in the investigation.
The most damaging revelation concerned Mokwele herself. Idac had presented her as an “unqualified civilian” whose appointment to a senior crime intelligence technical position formed the centrepiece of Idac’s corruption case.
Yet evidence before the commission established that she possessed, among other qualifications, a national diploma in mechatronics engineering and a degree in industrial engineering.
Idac head Andrea Johnson, who resigned midway through her testimony at the commission, subsequently conceded that Mokwele was qualified and apologised for the earlier characterisation.
That should never have emerged only under cross-examination at a public inquiry.
An elite anti-corruption agency such as Idac cannot afford to discover the basic qualifications of a person it has arrested after the arrest has already taken place.
Verification of qualifications, job requirements, recruitment procedures and the evidential basis for an alleged offence should be the beginning of an investigation, not a revelation at the end of it.
The state has enormous power to arrest, charge and publicly stigmatise individuals.
That power must be exercised on evidence, not suspicion. That power must also be exercised on facts, not assumptions and on offences that have actually been committed, not hypothetical misconduct that investigators fear might occur.
The Idac case therefore offers several lessons.
One is that it must first investigate before arresting.
The temptation in high-profile corruption investigations is to regard an arrest as evidence of seriousness. It is not. An arrest is an exercise of state power, not a substitute for proof.
Investigators must first establish whether the facts support a reasonable prospect of prosecution. Where a case involves a technical appointment, investigators should understand the qualifications, recruitment process and applicable regulations and experience before building a criminal case around them.
Also, Idac must ensure independent verification is mandatory. No prosecutor should approve a major corruption prosecution merely because investigators say that a suspect is unqualified, corrupt or involved in a criminal scheme.
The underlying documents must be examined independently. In the Mokwele matter, the failure to establish something as fundamental as her qualifications is particularly damaging to confidence in the investigation.
Third, prosecutors must be prepared to say no when they are presented with a flimsy complaint.
An anti-corruption institution should not operate as a conveyor belt from complaint to investigation to arrest to prosecution. There must be genuine points at which prosecutors can stop a weak case.
The reported evidence that concerns about the strength of the case were raised internally, yet the matter continued, deserves serious institutional examination.
The solutions suggested are not to weaken Idac. They are to make the institution stronger, more professional and more accountable.
Idac, which is capable of taking on politically connected and powerful people without fear or favour, must earn that confidence through competent investigations, ethical conduct, rigorous evidence and respect for due process.
The greatest danger to an anti-corruption institution is not that it loses a case. Every prosecutor loses cases. The real danger is losing the public’s confidence that it can tell the difference between a strong case and a weak one.
Idac was created to restore confidence in South Africa’s ability to confront corruption. The Khumalo-Mokwele case has instead exposed how quickly that confidence can be squandered.
The lesson should be simple: the war against corruption must itself be fought according to the law, evidence and the highest standards of integrity. Otherwise, the institution established to defend justice can become another casualty of the very crisis it was created to solve.
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