….but minister refutes reports that the gvt wants to fire DPP
Mohloai Mpesi
THE government says it is unhappy with the “poor work” of the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Advocate Hlalefang Motinyane.
Justice and Law Minister, Richard Ramoeletsi, expressed concern about the “poor work” of Advocate Motinyane’s office in an exclusive interview with the Lesotho Times this week.
So irked is Mr Ramoeletsi with the “poor output” of the DPP’s office that he says he is now engaged in various efforts to empower it to become more effective and help it execute its mandate efficiently.
Mr Ramoeletsi spoke to the Lesotho Times in the wake of reports that his ministry was now pushing to remove Adv Motinyane as DPP and either redeploy her to another lesser post or even impeach her if she resists.
A report in the Lesotho Tribune newspaper nonetheless alleged that the real reason of Adv Motinyane’s removal was because she had refused to withdraw cases against allies of the current coalition government. Adv Motinyane has doggedly pursued criminal cases against former army commander Tlali Kamoli and allies of the current coalition government like former deputy prime minister Mothetjoa Metsing.
Mr Ramoeletsi rubbished these allegations. His sole interest was to ensure that the DPP’s office effectively discharged its mandate to prosecute crimes and help curb rampant criminality in Lesotho. The country’s criminal justice system could never operate effectively without an efficient and competent office of the DPP.
Mr Ramoeletsi said he had hired 28 law graduates, through an employment scheme called Lihalahala, to help collect criminal case data throughout the 10 districts of the country to enable him to formulate a response to challenges in the criminal justice system.
Although the minister rubbished the allegations that he wants the DPP dismissed from her post, he said her office needed serious help.
“The work of her office (DPP) is not satisfactory, I am not talking about her as a person, but I am referring to her office in general,” Mr Ramoeletsi said.
Chief Justice Sakoane Sakoane has also previously lambasted Adv Motinyane describing her as “incompetent”. In one instance Chief Justice Sakoane lambasted Adv Motinyane in crude terms, stating that she needed to “go back to law school” because of the “poor quality” of her prosecutions. Adv Motinyane then hit back at the Chief Justice in a public statement, essentially accusing him of “behaving unprofessionally”.
The feud between the DPP and the Chief Justice worsened when Adv Motinyane successfully sought at the Court of Appeal the recusal of Justice Sakoane in one high profile case involving former army commander, Tlali Kamoli.
Reports have suggested the government is on the verge of setting up a tribunal to seek Adv Motinyane’s removal from office. The Lesotho Tribune even quoted former Chief Justice Mahapela Lehohla as confirming that he had been approached to chair the tribunal but would only give feedback on that role to those who had approached him.
But Minister Ramoeletsi again dismissed these allegations. There was no tribunal set to impeach the DPP and no such matter had ever reached his office, he said.
Mr Ramoeletsi said the only thing they needed to do was to help the DPP’s office be able to deliver desired results.
“It is not easy to say DPP is not doing her work and therefore must be fired. She will go to court and argue that I did not give her the tools to execute her work.
“I don’t know about the issue of impeaching the DPP. Such matter has never reached my office. It is only a hearsay.
“The law protects the DPP, and without hard evidence we can’t impeach anybody. We don’t want to work like those former regimes which used to kick DPPs out of office using the police force. That will embarrass us. We said we are going to do things differently,” Minister Ramoeletsi said.
He added: “There is nothing like that (impeachment) in my office. In fact, if the government wanted to fire her, that would originate from my office and I can assure you that there is nothing like that in this office. I have learned that a certain publication has said that Deputy Prime Minister (Nthomeng Majara) has launched a process to fire her (DPP). That is not true. If she wanted to do so, she would have taken the step while she was still Minister of Law, not now when she has no control over the DPP’s office.”
Minister Ramoeletsi said it was the government’s duty to capacitate the office of the DPP for it to prosecute criminal cases effectively.
“My job is to ensure that we resource the office of the DPP, which is currently badly under resourced. I am preparing to employ 20 prosecutors for her. I am also preparing with other ministries to empower her office. There are many lawyers in other ministries that we want to transfer to the office of DPP to help prosecute cases.
“There is a lot of backlogs of criminal cases, including murder, and people are not happy about it. Even the office of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offence (DCEO) is complaining that the DPP’s office is slow to prosecute cases.
“We have therefore employed many prosecutors for the DCEO to help prosecute cases there, thus helping the office of DPP to do the work.…. It is not only the DCEO which is complaining (about the poor prosecution of cases). The police also complain that after arresting suspects and placing them before the courts, those are then released easily. Cases do not proceed to finality,” he said.
He continued: “Some of our problems in the justice sector are because we have few judges and as the government we are trying to ensure that we hire more.”
Mr Ramoeletsi said the plan was to eventually recruit more than 25 prosecutors to help the office of DPP.
“We have a budget for recruiting and training prosecutors to ensure they are competent enough. We are supported by the European Union in that project.
“When we have enough prosecutors, there is no need to even engage prosecutors from outside the country. There was no need to have engaged Shaun Abrams. There is nothing special that a foreign prosecutor can do for the government to win cases. It is only the evidence of witnesses that can prove commission of a crime.”
Advocate Abrahams was engaged by DPP Motinyane in 2018 to prosecute five high-profile cases. He was the lead prosecutor in the murder trial of 10 soldiers accused of killing three civilians in 2017, the murder and treason trial of politicians Mothetjoa Metsing and Selibe Mochoboroane together with former army commander Tlali Kamoli and the murder case of former army commander Maaparankoe Mahao, among others. He quit in August last year over delayed payments of his fees. He also cited a fallout with DPP Motinyane which he said was beyond repair.
Mr Ramoeletsi said the engagement of Adv Abrahams had just been “a plan to milk the government’s money”.
“There was no need to have 91 witnesses on one case. Do you really need so many people to prove that a certain person was killed? What do you need 91 people for, if it is not only to squander money? It is a money-making scheme. Why would you make a judge sit there in court to listen to 91 people testify over one thing? I have never seen such a thing….,” said Mr Ramoeletsi in reference to the treason and murder case in which the DPP’s office had lined 91 witnesses.
“It is an injustice made to the suspects and taxpayers. We have paid close to M10 million to that prosecutor (Abrahams). I have stopped it because it didn’t make sense,” he said.
Mr Ramoeletsi said there was need to computerise the prosecution system so cases could be managed digitally from when a complaint is laid at a police station up to when the courts hand down judgements.
He also expressed great concern regarding cases which he said were also dragging in the districts.
“I hired about 28 law graduates (Lihalahala), I have spread them to the districts to collect information of pending cases and report to me so that we can see where the problem is for us to address it adequately. We have a lot of pending cases and without data we can’t manage them,” he said.
He disclosed there were up to 215 sexual offences cases pending in Butha-Buthe district alone dating back to 2019. Traffic offences stood at 269, public indecency (four), fraud (13), unlawful possession of firearms (34) assault (167), abduction (11), robbery (41), house breaking (100), theft (156), common theft (47), murder (108).
“We have to fight to ensure that these cases are heard in the courts of law. If we have 215 sexual assault cases in one district which has only two magistrates and one prosecutor, that is a sign that we have a huge problem.
“One magistrate needs at least three prosecutors to work with so that the cases are pushed swiftly. It is all about human resources, which are not there.
“As things stand, that office (of DPP) doesn’t have the capacity to do the job, it needs an overhaul. A digitalised criminal system will help us monitor cases from when they are filed with the police so that we can be able to see where the problem is when a case does not proceed. The issue of case files disappearing will also be yesterday’s news because everything will be digital and traceable,” Mr Ramoeletsi said.
