Speeches

Remarks by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mmamoloko Kubayi on the occasion of the NPA Leadership Conference, 19 August 2025

Programme director
National Director of Public Prosecutions: Adv Shamila Batohi
Judge C. Mocumie
Ismael Momoniant
Lt. General Mbotho
Senior Managers of the NPA
Ladies and Gentlemen

Good Morning,
I am very delighted to join you this morning for this event in the month of August, a Month in which we do not only celebrate women, but we also introspect on how well we have done as a society in women emancipation.

So, before I go into details on what you have asked me to speak about, I would just like to pay tribute to the women in our society. Against all odds, women have demonstrated that, given half a chance, they can tilt the scales towards gender equality and in most cases, they outperform their male counterparts.

Even though significant progress has been made to empower women and in ensuring that they assume positions of responsibility in all spheres of society, there remains a lot of work to be done to ensure that the workplace is a conducive environment for women to thrive and prosper.

Sexual harassment and abuse of power by men who are in positions of responsibility is a blight in our society. That women are still asked for sexual favours in return for promotion and other benefits to which they are entitled, is a cancer that we must fight hard to eliminate. What you have asked me to talk about is not completely divorced from what I have just raised about creating a conducive environment for women to thrive and prosper.

Today, you have asked me to speak about ‘Repositioning the NPA as the heartbeat of the Justice system’. To have a clear vision of how we can reposition an institution such as the NPA we need to clearly understand both the, domestic and global environment, under which the institution is operating. It requires us to understand the complexities of the world in which criminals operate and the sophisticated tools that are in use today when crimes are committed.

The kind of changes that have happened in the world require institutions that are flexible, innovative and adaptive to remain effective and resilient. We need to ask ourselves the question: what is it that we are going to do to ensure that the NPA is a flexible, innovative and an adaptive organisation?

The most fundamental point to understand is that the NPA exists because our country and world in general is afflicted by crimes and the criminals responsible for those crimes need to be held accountable. In an ideal world, there are some who would insist that our focus should be on ending crime so that we can live a crime free world.

Unfortunately, the real existing world is such that crime will always be with us and as such there will a need for the NPA to continue to do its job and do it well.

We now live in a world in which rapid technological changes that include the emergence of artificial intelligence have changed life as we know it. These changes have changed the way we interact, the way we produce goods and the way crimes are committed. Crimes that we used to watch in science fiction movies have become a reality today and we have to find ways of building the capacity to tackle.

Historically, we have known the generators of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) relied on the exploitation of human victims. With these new technologies this kind of material are becoming a thing of the past. In 2024, the Internet Watch Foundation released a report in which they raised a concern about the emergence of AI-generated content which has now replaced human involvement. Prosecutors who have dealt with these types of cases in the United States have already raised their concern that AI-generate CSAM, complicates detection efforts and raises new ethical and legal challenges. We need to ask ourselves the question: are we ready to tackle this type of crime? Will we be able to detect this crime before it destroys the fabric of our society?

The team has been led by Ismail Momoniat has done a sterling job to get our country off the FATF greylist.

We ended up in the greylist because there were concerns raised about our capacity to prevent and detect certain types of financial crimes that can compromise state security or fund terrorist organisations. As we are making progress in dealing with these challenges, these new technologies are likely to further complicate how we tackle financial crimes.

For Example, artificial intelligence is poised to completely change how money laundering happens. Human mules and manual coordination, particularly for cybercriminals, drug traffickers, and fraudsters are what traditional money launderers rely upon to achieve their end.

New AI driven technologies such as synthetic ID generators and automated cryptocurrency account creation, are poised to automate these operations significantly accelerating the speed with which these crimes are committed. This means that we need to start today our work to train our people to be able to deal with crimes of this nature otherwise we will stay on the greylist for longer than we would like.

The other complexity that AI has brought is the level of autonomy which these technologies exhibit which is sometimes difficult to understand on whom to lay the blame when a crime has been committed. US Department of Homeland Security has highlighted in their 2022 report on “Emerging Threats in AI” that Autonomous AI systems could eliminate the need for human hackers enabling widespread attacks at a scale previously unimaginable, with dire economic and security implications.

A recent example of Autonomous AI is a case of an AI model that demonstrated that AI systems willing to deceive, cheat and steal to achieve their goals. To avoid being replaced by another model, one AI model tried to blackmail an engineer about an affair it learned about in an email. The question when you asked to prosecute a case like this, who bears the responsibility, who gets prosecuted?

I have highlighted all these developments simply to make the point that if we are going to reposition the NPA to be the heartbeat of the justice system we need to be alive to these realities.

The question is: in this changing and changed in environment, what is it that we are going to do so that we can be able to reposition the NPA to be the effective instrument for getting justice for the victims?

Last week when I had a meeting with the German Ambassador, I was pleased to hear that some of you have started training on AI technologies and the implications for the Justice system. Indeed, the NPA has to ensure that its personnel develop capabilities in these new areas so that we can still be able to deliver justice for the victims. A repositioned NPA will require capable and appropriately skilled prosecutors who will have the capacity to prosecute regardless of the complexity of the case.

Coupled with the requisite skills capacity, must be the ability for prosecutors to do their work ethically and with integrity. As a prosecutor you are called upon to carry out your work without fear or favour, but once you are compromised ethically those principles no longer apply. Some of the decisions to let criminals of the hook are made with a belief that some of these crimes have no victims. Let me make it clear, there is no such thing as a victimless crime, every crime has a victim.

We have learned from state capture that where there is no ethics and integrity, institutions can be compromised. In a compromised law enforcement agency there is no equality before the law and this is a principle that we must never compromise on. We must remain the voice of the voiceless victims, defend the weak against the strongmen and women who think they can abuse others with impunity and get away with it. As we thought that we are dealing with the outcomes of the Zondo commission, we are now confronted with the Madlanga Commission to deal with allegations made by General Mkhwanazi.

The mentality of a victimless crime is partly what has led to perception that the rights of criminals are given more attention than the rights of the victims. While it is important to respect everyone’s rights and to ensure that every conviction is fair, and therefore safe from being overturned on appeal, there is a need to create a balance between the rights of victims and defendants.

The adoption of the victim-centric model which we apply in the Thuthuzela centres in dealing sexual offences and domestic violence crimes has proved to be very effective and has achieved high number of convictions.

Through this model we have shown that the rights and safety of the victims can take precedence and that we are uncompromising about getting justice for the victim. We have proved that we can privilege the rights of the victim without compromising the rights of the accused persons. In a repositioned NPA, isn’t this a model we should replicate across crime categories?

Every time I visit a court and listen to challenges that range from postponements to the inability to enrol matters because of missing information, it emphasizes the need for all the elements that comprise the justice value chain to work in tandem.

A closer working relationship between the investigators, Prosecutors and court administration will ensure that investigations comply with the rules and that abuses of the process will be avoided. It will reduce the likelihood that the State brings cases before the courts, which shouldn’t be brought, and which are not justified by sufficient evidence. In a prosecutor driven process fewer cases would be discontinued, and more convictions will be being obtained.

Equally there is a need for the prosecutors to work more closely with the judiciary to ensure that there is effective case management so that the turnaround time for concluding cases is reduced.

A repositioned NPA of the future needs to be an employer of choice. Young people coming out of university must look at the NPA as an organisation in which their careers as lawyers can flourish.

The NPA must position itself as the best training ground for the best legal practitioners in the country. I believe this is possible.

The NPA needs to be the shining example in the justice system of an ethical and capable developmental state.

For this we need the NPA that is:

• Capacitated by people with the requisite skills and are passionate to serve.
• Capacitated by people who are ethical and act with integrity
• Works closely with other institutions within the justice value chain
• Encourages continuous development of its personnel to keep up with the changes that are happening in today’s word
• Takes a lead in creating a conducive environment for women to thrive and prosper.
• Adopts a victim-centric approach to prosecution.

In a repositioned NPA, "Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done and it must be felt”

I thank you.