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- The Zondo Commission has launched an urgent application for yet another extension.
- The commission has asked for an extension until the end of February 2022 in order to release its report in three parts.
- The Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution says there's no guarantee this will be the commission's last extension plea.
The Council for the Advancement of the South Africa Constitution (Casac) says the Zondo Commission's application for yet another extension indicates that planning for the finalisation of the report has not been as tight as it should be.
On Tuesday, the commission filed an urgent application, arguing it would not meet the end of December deadline it had previously received from the Gauteng High Court.
READ | Zondo's state capture commission applies for yet another extension
In September, the High Court in Pretoria granted the commission led by Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo a three-month extension until the end of this year.
On Tuesday, the commission released a statement in which Zondo outlined why it was once again approaching the court.
Zondo said the commission would divide its final report into three parts, delivering one report each month between December and February.
In his affidavit, Zondo explained that part one would cover Transnet, South African Airways, SAA Technical and SA Express.
Casac's Lawson Naidoo said:
Naidoo said that they had been advocating for this since the beginning.
"We have been calling on him right from the very beginning to produce interim reports and deal with an issue such as Transnet, for example, and then produce a report on that. He has resisted this all along, saying it is not going to be possible to do that, yet now he seems to be suggesting that it is possible.
"It would have focused the work of the commission in a way to say now we are going to do what we saw is that one week we would have a testimony about a particular issue, then the next week, we would have a whole new set of witnesses dealing with something totally unrelated. You get a sense that there was no real structure in terms of how the commission was approaching its work," said Naidoo.
READ | Zondo Commission chair plans to submit report to president in 3 parts, seeks extension to February
In his affidavit, Zondo said that once the president released the first report to the public law enforcement agencies, including the National Prosecuting Authority, they could "begin to study Part I of the report and derive from it such assistance as they may derive in regard to decisions that they need to make".
In 2020 however, News24 reported that the president amended the state capture inquiry regulation, which would allow law enforcement agencies to access information.
"The other issue is this issue of sharing information with other law enforcement the regulations regarding the commission were amended in 2020 to enable to commission to proactively share information with law enforcement agencies, specifically the Hawks and the NPA, so we need to know whether that has happened because what he is suggesting at the beginning of his affidavit is that once the president releases the report publicly it's only at that point that the information will get shared with law enforcement agencies.
Naidoo asked:
"There is nothing to prevent to commission from sharing that information already. They don't have to wait for the finalisation of the report because in any event that Hawks and the NPA would have to conduct their own further investigations before they can take a decision on who they are going to charge and what they are going to charge them with. That is a process that should have happened already," he added.
Also of concern is the financial implication of the drawn-out conclusion of the commission.
In September, when Zondo approached the courts, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola slammed Zondo's application as unconstitutional - and asked the court to cap the commission's future costs at R15 million.
Lamola later withdrew his challenge.
News24 approached the Department of Justice to comment on Zondo's latest bid, but the department's spokesperson Crispin Phiri said it was not commenting on the matter.
In Tuesday's statement, Zondo said that he had already spoken to the president about the extension and that the commission's budget would cover the legal costs of the application.
"The secretary of the commission assures me that the existing budget allocation for the commission will be adequate to cover any fees that may relate to the commission's legal and investigations teams up to the end of February 2021 and that it will not be necessary for the commission to ask for further funding in regard to such fees."
Naidoo added that there was no guarantee that this would be the commission's last extension application.
"The acting Chief Justice is basically using the same arguments that he used earlier in the year when applying for other extensions. It sort of leaves one with a sense of whether this application will be the final one or will we get another application for another extension in a month or so. On the basis that in February 2020 the High Court granted him what they called a final extension until the 31st of March 2021 after that final extension this is now the fourth application after the final one," he said.
The application is expected to be heard on 28 December.
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