‘No further extensions for Zondo Commission’ – Judge

With just five working days to go before what would otherwise have been its D-Day, the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture was yesterday thrown a lifeline by the court.

This, with Judge Wendy Hughes, sitting in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, extending the commission’s deadline to complete its work, to 31 March 2021.

Despite the commission’s opposition, though, she made the extension final.

“In my view, further extensions would not be warranted on the [commission’s] version,” Judge Hughes said in handing down her ruling, “The interest of justice dictates that finality be attained with findings, recommendations and a report of the commission. The commission owes this to the nation as the work of the commission is of national interest”.

Hughes did, however, grant the commission three months more than they had asked for, in order to accommodate any potential further need for an extension.

The Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector Including Organs of State, also known as the Zondo Commission, was officially appointed in January 2018.

It became operational in March of that year and was originally given just 180 days to wrap up its work.

The commission, which is being chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, approached the court that July and secured its first extension until the end of February this year.

Just before Christmas, it approached the court once again, asking for a second extension – this time till the end of the year. The matter came before Judge Hughes earlier this month and was argued on an urgent basis.

Advocate Paul Kennedy – for Zondo – said at the time that in order to confine the commission’s work, and thus speed up the process, the Deputy Chief Justice could either ask the President to limit the commission’s terms of reference or “farm out specific aspects for investigation to other state institutions”.

But Kennedy argued against the court making the extension final.

While, the application proceeded unopposed, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) – which was listed as a respondent – did make submissions to the court, asking that if an extension were granted, it be the last one. Kennedy reportedly told the court that “the very nature of the beast is that it is difficult to predict”.

Judge Hughes said yesterday that she was “mindful of the fact that it is in the interest of justice that there ought to be finality with the work of the commission, encompassing findings and recommendations to be acted upon as a matter of urgency”.

She said the court had the “inherent power to regulate its own processes in the interest of justice”.

“This is precisely one of those occasions that dictates that in order to attain justice, finality ought to be reached as this court is at liberty to prescribe any terms it seem meet in the interest of justice”.

The commission was unable to respond to a request for comment yesterday but CASAC’s director, Lawson Naidoo, welcomed the outcome.

“Obviously, we’re very pleased,” he said, “I think it focuses the mind of the commission which now has to complete its work within a very definitive time frame”.

Naidoo said the council’s submissions to the court had represented its feelings that “there needed to be certainty about this process”.

“Whilst we value the work that the commission has done, we do feel that it has meandered along a little bit too much,” he said.

He also highlighted the massive costs that the commission had thus far incurred – which at last count, totalled more than R350 million – and said there were other places to which resources also had to be channelled.

“We do feel that there will come a point at which the commission can’t keep eating up public funds while law enforcement agencies and the NPA are in desperate need of additional funds,” he said.

But Director of Accountability Now Paul Hoffman SC yesterday described the order handed down as “an encouragement from the court to get the commission finalised”.

He said there remained room for a further extension, if one were warranted.

“It is costing a lot of money and it does seem to be holding up a lot of consequential moves – prosecutions, the recovery of stolen or looted property and the cancellation of contracts – and most important of all, it’s holding up the establishment of an Integrity Commission to actually deal with investigating, prosecuting and combating grand corruption,” Hoffman said.

The IFP raised the idea of the establishment of a new Chapter 9 institution – an ‘Integrity Commission’ tasked with preventing, combating, investigating and prosecuting grand corruption – in Parliament, last March.

“But if it turns out that circumstances are such that the commission is able to persuade a court in a year’s time that they do need a little more time, I think the court would be hard pressed to refuse them,” Hoffman said.

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