From the Business Day (Johannesburg), EDITORIAL, 30 April 2008
If the ANC was serious about SA as a participatory democracy it would at least have waited until the report had been made public and the reasoning behind Khampepe's recommendations had been assessed by ordinary mortals. But that would not suit its political agenda, which is to get rid of an agency that is making a pest of itself by refusing to treat ANC leaders as royal game.
THE African National Congress (ANC) has lost the reasoned debate over whether the Scorpions should be retained; that much is evident from the increasingly desperate and illogical tone of its argument for the unit's dissolution.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe's recent tirade accusing the Scorpions and official opposition of being united only in their hatred of the ANC was clear evidence of this, and chief whip Nathi Mthethwa's amateurish smear attempt in the Independent Group newspapers a few days later fell into the same category.
This just hours after the Presidency reluctantly agreed to release the full report of the Khampepe commission, which, by its own admission, the leadership of the ANC has not seen. The commission is understood to have come out strongly in support of the continued independence of the Scorpions as a unit within the National Prosecuting Authority rather than it being incorporated into the police.
The only thing that is transparent in this sorry saga is the governing party's belief that while all South Africans are equal, some are more equal than others.
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