Mbeki fights for Scorpions
10/02/2008 11:43  - (SA)  

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Johannesburg - An intense battle over the future of the Scorpions is raging between the government and the ANC, the Sunday Times reported.

The party's parliamentary caucus was setting up a heavyweight committee to drive the dismantling of the unit - while President Thabo Mbeki was mounting a defiant fight-back campaign to preserve it, the newspaper said.

The committee - the first of its kind - comprised five senior MPs from the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. It was set up to ensure that the government dissolves the Scorpions by June.

Sources close to the stand-off between Mbeki and the forces that defeated him at the ANC's Polokwane conference in December said the President planned to appeal to public opinion to help keep the Scorpions intact so that they could continue their fight against organised crime.

They said Mbeki had accepted that the unit would have to move out of the National Prosecuting Authority's office, but that he wanted to keep it broadly intact.

"You cannot simply scrap the Scorpions and leave nothing in their place. There has to be some organisation to fight organised crime," an official close to the process told the newspaper.

The government is even seeing the support of opposition parties as a welcome addition to the arsenal.

A senior MP said the job of the five-person committee would be to make sure Parliament met the June deadline set by the ANC's National Executive Committee.

Others said the mandate would include checking the text of the legislation that will do away with the Directorate of Special Operations, as the Scorpions are officially known, to make sure it meets the ANC leadership's demands.

The chairman of Parliament's committee on Safety and Security, Maggie Sotyu, is the convener of the new committee. She is believed to have told the ANC Caucus that Parliament would move along the deadlines set out by the Polokwane conference, without compromise.

Other members of the committee are Ben Fihla, Bulelani Magwanishe, Christopher Ntuli and Florence Nyanda.

Parliamentary sources confirmed that Mbeki was aware of the watchdog committee's operation, which is the first to be set up by the ANC to monitor the drafting of legislation in an ANC-controlled ministry, the Sunday Times said.