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‘Lack of skills in SA’s NPA hindering its ability to bring successful prosecutions’

Date: May 19, 2025

The South African (SA) opposition party Democratic Alliance (DA) says a lack of skills and experience in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is seriously hampering its ability to bring successful prosecutions.

This after the High Court in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape Province acquitted Nigerian televangelist Timothy Omotoso and two others in April.

The trio faced over 30 charges, including rape, human trafficking, and racketeering.

DA spokesperson on Justice and Constitutional Development, Advocate Glynnis Breytenbach, "One of the reasons is that as soon as people become skilled or experienced, they get poached by private enterprises because they can pay them more. But the fact of the matter is that, prosecuting is a job that you learn on the job. You can't learn it at University, it doesn't matter how well qualified you are.

Prosecuting is a job that you learn by doing it, and the people who have had all that expertise are now retiring. And those skills are not being retained in any formal fashion. And the young prosecutors have nobody to learn from. So there's a lack of skills, there's a lack of experience, there's a lack of exposure and this is starting to show in the way that big matters are being handled."

--SABC--

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