“I raised concerns from the onset” — an objection from inside IDAC
Legal commentary
A prosecutor who worked inside IDAC gave evidence on day 151 that she objected to how the Crime Intelligence investigations were being run, and did so from the beginning. "I raised concerns from the onset," she testified, and "repeatedly thereafter." She placed the scope of those concerns on the record: "These concerns are not limited to the Mokwele matter"; "I had concerns about the Crime Intelligence-related cases"; and they extended to "matters relating to the National Commissioner, General Fannie Masemola." Her evidence also describes a structural decision. "Advocate Johnson decided shortly after the section 28(13) authorisation of the Crime Intelligence matters, that all other Crime Intelligence matters would be ring-fenced into a project," the witness said, "which she named Project Diversion." Asked about the name, her answer was "I do not know why she chose this name." The name is reported here because it is in the record and because the witness's disclaimer is in the record beside it. No inference is drawn from it. A project title is not evidence of what the project did, and reasoning from an evocative name is the kind of step this record cannot support. On how work was allocated, the witness said "Advocate Johnson calls Perumal's team the A team," and that "the A team, they do not follow the rules." That second statement is one participant's characterisation of colleagues, not an established fact, and nothing in the extracted record adjudicates it. It sits against the instruments described elsewhere in the same evidence, and Adv Baloyi SC put to the witness that there exists "the operations manual which prescribes or which sets out that there will be a team which is constituted in the way that you have described" — a proposition put in questioning rather than a finding. The witness also described a consequence of not complying: "If you do not follow the instructions, you receive emails of a nature." A statement before the Commission records a colleague who "started sending emails and memoranda that accorded with my concerns on how the Mokwele matter was being conducted," which places a second person's contemporaneous documents alongside her account. The legal register here differs from a case-selection question. Evidence that an employee raised internal objections, repeatedly and in writing, and that adverse correspondence followed, engages protected-disclosure protection and the employer's duties toward someone who reports suspected impropriety. Whether her concerns were well founded and whether anything adverse followed as a result are separate questions, and the extracted record settles neither. What it establishes is that the objection was made, when it was made, and how far it reached.
In plain terms
One of the prosecutors inside IDAC told the Commission she objected to how the Crime Intelligence cases were being handled, and that she said so from the start and kept saying it. Her worries were not confined to one case. They covered the Crime Intelligence matters generally, and reached as far as matters involving the National Commissioner of Police. She also described a decision to gather all the remaining Crime Intelligence matters into a single project, taken by the IDAC head shortly after the first authorisation came through. The project was given a name. We are reporting the name because it is in the evidence, and reporting alongside it that the witness said she does not know why that name was chosen. A name is not proof of anything, and we are not going to invite you to read meaning into one. On how the work was divided, she said the IDAC head referred to one investigator's team as the A team, and that in her view that team did not follow the rules. That is her account of her colleagues, and nobody has tested it. She also said that people who did not follow instructions received a certain kind of email, and a statement before the Commission describes another colleague sending emails and memoranda that matched her concerns. Why this is a different kind of story from the rulebook one: this is about a person who says she objected inside an organisation and kept a record of it. South African law protects employees who report suspected wrongdoing at work, and it places duties on the employer who receives such a report. Whether she was right, and whether anything was done to her because of it, are questions the evidence so far does not answer. What it does show is that the objection was made, early, and more than once.
Cited claims
Supporting context