Dear Mr President,

We write this open letter to you in advance of your address to the nation scheduled for 7pm on Sunday 13 July 2025. We hope that our intervention will assist you in the formulation of your response to the matters raised by General Mkhwanazi when he held a media briefing on Sunday 6 July 2025.

At the root of the complaints of the General is the systemic failure of the state to deal with serious corruption effectively. This failure is, in large part, attributable to the inadequate response of parliament to the orders made by the Constitutional Court in the case now known as “Glenister Two”. The joint majority judgment in that case was handed down on 17 March 2011 and has not yet been implemented properly. The judgment requires, in terms that still bind government, that a single body, outside the control of the executive, be created to deal with corruption. The court specified in detail the criteria by which that body would be characterised . The main criteria are now known as the STIRS criteria, being a body of specialists, trained in anti-corruption expertise, independent in structure and operations, resourced in guaranteed terms and secure in tenure of office.

No such body has ever existed in South Africa.

The remedial legislation required by the court was instead formulated to tweak the Hawks legislation. The resultant NPA/Hawks experiment in anti-corruption duties has proved to be a dismal failure. This failure has compelled you to create the Investigating Directorate against corruption (IDAC) within the NPA. None of the main STIRS criteria are met by the NPA , IDAC and the Hawks. The prosecution-oriented recommendations of the Zondo Commission have mostly not been implemented and corruption with impunity is now the order of the day.

Currently pending before parliament are two private member’s bills which envisage the establishment and enablement of a new Chapter Nine Anti-Corruption Commission. The bills have been designed to comply with the standards set by the court in Glenister Two. These standards are binding on government. It is within your power to ensure that the GNU, or at least the ANC element in the GNU, support these bills. The ANC has 40% of the votes in parliament. For the bills to be made law a two thirds majority is needed in parliament. This means that without ANC support, the bills will not become law. Should that occur, it will become necessary to revert to public interest litigation aimed at securing proper implementation of the binding rulings made in Glenister Two. It is obviously premature to litigate while the bills are pending and still under parliamentary consideration.

We implore you to support the bills that envisage a new Chapter Nine Anti-Corruption Commission. When you initially reacted from Brazil to the news of the General’s media briefing, you expressly and correctly invoked the rule of law. To do so fully in this instance requires the government to implement properly the binding findings in Glenister Two.

The matter has been discussed in greater detail on the website below and in the e-book “Under the Swinging Arch”, a hard copy of which was given to you when you addressed the Cape Town Press Club in February last year. The e-book is accessible for free by googling its title.

Yours in accountability,

Paul Hoffman SC

Director

Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa

Campaigning as Accountability Now