The Investigative Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) is under intense public scrutiny, with some calling for its disbandment as a result of what is coming out of the Madlanga commission.
For those who may have forgotten, Idac was established in 2020 as a prosecutions-driven law enforcement agency whose main priority was to fight corruption.
This followed years of public complaints that since the controversial disbandment of the Scorpions, about a decade earlier, graft and corruption had come to dominate many of the country’s public institutions — leading to a grand criminal scheme that came to be known as state capture.
So, as then chief justice Raymond Zondo headed the state capture commission that brought much of the rot into the open, it was to Idac that the state turned for further probing and prosecution of those exposed by Zondo as allegedly being involved.
The progress has been frustratingly slow with less than a handful of the high-profile personalities found wanting by Zondo successfully prosecuted in the courts.
It is progress nonetheless and, according to the body’s defenders, Idac has at least 39 state-capture-related matters before the courts currently.
However, whatever little progress the organisation has so far made is now being undermined by revelations at the Madlanga commission.
These seem to suggest that, instead of being preoccupied with prosecuting state capture matters, Idac bosses have abused their powers and the institution to fight factional battles emanating from the leadership war raging within the SAPS and its crime intelligence division for years.
The credibility of Idac boss advocate Andrea Johnson has come into question following her failure to appear before the commission, citing ill-health, as well as the dismal performance of one of her subordinates in the witness stand last week.
Hopefully, Johnson will be healthy enough this week to finally give her side of the story.
But no matter what happens with her at the commission this week, we should be able to distinguish between the actions of the individuals — no matter how senior they might be within an organisation — and the organisation itself.
It is for this reason that we do not believe that Idac should go the way of the Scorpions.
Instead of disbanding this important body in the fight against corruption, the rotten apples should be rooted out and a new and reliable leadership be appointed to steer Idac towards the battle it was set up to fight.
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