Why the Scorpions should go

Submitted by Kaizer Mohau

I have for some time now been investigating the rationale behind the sudden outburst by the opposition and lunatic academic professors of the capitalist school of thinking regarding the integration of the Scorpions into the South African Police Service.

To dissolve the Scorpions is a conference resolution taken by the ANC, which is the ruling party. In exercising its constitutional and political obligation, it had to make this call.

The ANC national executive committee was therefore implementing the mandate given to it by the general membership of the ANC in Polokwane in December 2007. Perhaps we need to reflect briefly on the nature and evolution of this resolution.

The Scorpions, as an investigative wing of the National Prosecuting Authority, are indeed the product of our own making as the ANC and the entire liberation movement. The objective was to create an institution that would ensure that high-profile cases were dealt with without fear or favour — our understanding as the ANC was that our police service was not designed in a manner that could execute this social, judicial and political mandate profoundly.

It is not because we had no confidence in the police service, but we understood the mandate of the police service to be much broader and general — thus our view emanated from the nature and seriousness of corruption, drug trafficking, fraud and so forth, among cases to which special attention should be paid.

It is as simple as this; even our Constitution, from which we derive our legal basis for the existence of the Scorpions, is witness to this clear mandate.

The Scorpions were created in such a manner, at least we thought, to ensure that it would be fully independent of political influence.

But it was not long before the Scorpions received training from the United States’s FBI. This training obviously was not only technical, but seems to have included some political lessons on how to manipulate the public opinion (propaganda).

Some of us warned of this situation long before the Scorpions showed us their true colours. The Scorpions began to conduct themselves as the private political army of the “1996 Class Project” and its think-tanks.

They began to conduct clandestine investigations into people whom the president of the republic perceived as political rivals in the battle over the soul of the most glorious movement of our continent, the ANC.

Kaizer Mohau worked as an activist journalist for the Socialist newspaper of the Socialist Workers’ Party from 1997 till 2000, whereafter he started an internship at the South African Communist Party. Between 2004 and 2007 he became the SACP media liaison officer and later acting spokesperson. He was also elected head of media and communications of the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust (Gauteng).

In the middle of 2007, he resigned from the SACP and joined the Potchefstroom city council as the spokesperson in the office of the executive mayor. He is a branch member of the ANC and the SACP, and a Samwu member as an employee in local government.