A former head of IDAC in a police cell. A suspended deputy police commissioner denied bail. A whistleblower general lined up to run the Hawks. And an ANC that has slipped to around a third of the vote. Few people have watched South Africa's criminal justice system unravel from as close up as Glynnis Breytenbach, the former senior prosecutor who is now the DA's chief whip in Parliament. In conversation with Alec Hogg, she said she was "sadly not surprised" by the latest arrests, called the Agrizzi plea deal a travesty, argued IDAC should never have existed and said the acting police minister should simply be appointed. She also set out how long a proper reset of police, prosecutors and courts would take, and who she would like to see behind bars a year from now. Despite all of it, she insisted the country can be fixed..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:01): Well, two months ago, she cautiously welcomed a new acting boss at IDAC. And in the same breath, she said that the institution should be shut down. Since then, IDAC's former head has been arrested. A deputy national police commissioner also has been put into a prison cell. The man who blew the whistle on the whole rotten structure is being lined up to become head of the Hawks and, some say, thereafter to become the chief of police here in South Africa. And on Wednesday, the ANC fell to around a third of the vote in South Africa. There's so much to talk to Glynnis Breytenbach about. She's a prosecutor turned chief whip at the Democratic Alliance. I guess on days like this, you would look back on your previous career and say, well, maybe you did make the right choice after all, going into politics.Glynnis Breytenbach (01:01): Yeah, hi Alec. So yes, I don't doubt that I made the right choice. It was an informed choice at the time, and the reasons that I made that choice still exist today. So I'm not sorry about the choice that I made. I loved prosecuting, make no mistake. I think it's the best job in the world. If you can do it properly and honestly and with integrity, then it is the best job in the world. There's nothing to beat it. But at the time that I left the National Prosecuting Authority, you could not necessarily do it honestly and with integrity. And then you can't do it at all, which is the choice that I made. But no, I entered politics because I know the criminal justice system, and I knew then what was going wrong with it, and I know today still how to fix it. And that is what I intend to do. It's taken longer than I had hoped, but we will fix it.Alec Hogg (01:58): You were telling me before we came on air that they really work you hard in the Democratic Alliance. So just share a bit of that with us, what you did on election day.Glynnis Breytenbach (02:04): [Laughs]Glynnis Breytenbach (02:10): Well, you know, every member of parliament has a constituency. You get allocated to a constituency when you get elected. And a constituency, as you know, consists of a number of wards. And for the performance of that constituency, you're responsible for the period that you are the constituency head, or the five years or whatever. So you have a number of councillors, each ward has a councillor, and a number of councillors in your constituency. And together with your councillors you form constituency structures, like a constituency, you have a constituency chairperson, and you develop branches to get people interested in the DA, to acquire activists who will help you at election time. We were very lucky to have had wonderful, wonderful activists. And that's your job. You have to grow the DA in the five years that you have before the next election, whichever election it is, local government or national government elections. And the way you do that is you get out there and interact with people. So that's the job, and as the constituency head, you kind of hold the strings together. In my case, prior to now, most of the councillors were more experienced politicians than I am, because I'm not a terribly good politician, I'm happy to admit, and before joining the DA and coming to Parliament, I had no experience in politics at all. So a lot of them have been there a lot longer than I have, and so I don't need to tell them what to do. They do it, we just sort of hold this stuff together between us. But on election day, I mean, everybody does whatever comes to hand. So on special votes day, what we did is we sort of helped set up the various voting points, the voting stations, made sure that we had people available to assist the public if they needed assistance. But on election day, on a day like Wednesday, I mean, you start work at four in the morning and you set up little gazebos at every voting station. They have to be populated by two, three, four people throughout the day, so people are in shifts. You have to make sure you have enough people. They have to be fed, so breakfast, lunch and supper must get delivered on time to all of the voting stations in my constituency. There are 47, so that was my and one other person's job, deliver the food to each voting station. And then, of course, a lot of people can't get to the voting station. Either they have no transport, or they're elderly and live alone and they've chosen not to make use of special votes or home visits. So you fetch them and you take them and you take them home again. You help them. It was a really hot day, so we drive around delivering water to all the various voting stations, just so that people wouldn't dehydrate, because it was really, really hot and the queues in the morning were very, very long. And so that's what you do until the stations close at seven o'clock.Alec Hogg (05:21): Hard work.Glynnis Breytenbach (05:22): It's hard work, and it was really, really hot, really hot. And it was a very long and tiring day, but now the results are coming in, absolutely 100% worth it.Alec Hogg (05:33): Yeah. Is it going to make much of a change, do you think? Obviously you're not the spokesperson who talks about the results and things like that, but in your particular area, do you think we might see a little bit more progress on crime and the whole criminal justice system now that the public has voted in this way?Glynnis Breytenbach (05:57): Well, not necessarily in the criminal justice system, to be felt immediately, because these were local government elections. But certainly where my constituency is, in the metro of Tshwane, we have done well. We expect to have the lion's share of a coalition. I'm sorry, here's my puppy. We expect to have the lion's share of the coalition, so it need not necessarily be a hugely fragmented coalition, which is always more productive. And certainly if we can then implement policies that we've implemented elsewhere, in Pretoria and in Johannesburg, we can turn them into Cape Town. It won't take a day, it won't take a week, it won't take five years. It will take a lot longer. But we can make a start. In Cape Town we've changed the face of law enforcement. Even though law enforcement, the South African Police Service, is a national competency, in Cape Town we've used available budget to absolutely, exponentially increase the effectiveness of law enforcement in the city and the province. And we will do the same in Gauteng. So yes, you will see a difference. Your street lights will work, your roads will have markings, robots will function. The verges will be cut. The place won't look like a wilderness. Potholes will be filled. You'll be able to drive with some confidence along a road without having to concern yourself whether you're going to be eaten up by a pothole. So those things will change in the short term. And those are important things. Refuse removal will happen. When you open your tap, you'll get water. When you switch on your lights, they will shine. So, yeah.Alec Hogg (07:46): It sounds to me like there's lots of work to come on getting all of those things right. But I'm sure you've got confidence. So just before we move on, what is a chief whip, for people who are not sure about the parliamentary process?Glynnis Breytenbach (08:02): Chief whip is a lot like a very glorified class captain. So, you know, you run the parliamentary operations of the party. So I'm responsible for the performance of the members of parliament, the Democratic Alliance members of parliament in the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. See that, you know, everybody's equipped, A, to do their job, be that they've got everything they need to do their job, and see that they in fact do their job. And then inevitably also deal with personal issues and stuff like leave, making sure that everybody understands what's required of them on big days in parliament, like the budget. So we have a lot of discourse in caucus about what we will support and what we won't support. That's a majority decision taken, and then you abide by the caucus decision, whether you won the debate or not, and it's my job to enforce those decisions. So the discipline of the caucus, really.Alec Hogg (09:12): Thanks, Glynnis. I'm sure that's opened quite a few eyes. Let's get back to the stories, the big stories that have been rocking the criminal justice system, or people who observe it. When you heard that Andrea Johnson, who was [head of IDAC, within the National Prosecuting Authority], that she had been arrested at five in the morning, so there was a signal that was sent to her, what immediately went through your head?Glynnis Breytenbach (09:44): I was bitterly disappointed. I was sadly not surprised, but bitterly disappointed. You mentioned in your introduction that I cautiously welcomed her appointment. I had misgivings at that time, not about the kind of issues that have subsequently arisen. And having seen her performance in the ad hoc committee, that was disappointing. And then the Madlanga Commission was devastating. And so I was not surprised at all that, you know, that action would be taken. But I was very disappointed. I was disappointed not so much for her having let herself and everybody else down. I was disappointed because, you know, once again, the National Prosecuting Authority is being dealt a blow that is just so hard to come back from.Alec Hogg (10:46): Hmm. Where's Paul O'Sullivan in all of this? And I'll tell you why. He pushes out emails all the time. I'm one of the recipients, I'm sure there are many others. And in the past he did good work, there was no question about it. But in the last few years, it seems that, well, I'm finding it very difficult to understand what his motive, what his agenda is.Glynnis Breytenbach (10:55): Sadly, me too.Alec Hogg (11:13): He did, however, have a close relationship with Andrea Johnson. Is it one of these things that if you lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas, i.e. by association now? Is he tarred with that? Some concern? How are you reading it all?Glynnis Breytenbach (11:29): Well, you know, Paul O'Sullivan has been corresponding with me for years, as I'm sure he has with you. I've always treated the information, if you want, that he supplies with great, great circumspection, simply because I don't know what its provenance is. I don't know where he gets it, and I don't know how he gets it. And therefore, I don't necessarily put much stock in it. I'm an old prosecutor; you need to know where your evidence comes from. And if it's been obtained in a fashion that's not entirely legal, or by other means, well, it's not evidence that I would be prepared to look at, because you can do nothing with it. It's not admissible. So the knowledge of it means nothing, because you can do nothing. In fact, it's worse to know than not to know, because you can do nothing with it. And so I've never put a lot of stock in what Paul has sent me. I understand, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that he meant well, you know, that his goal was to fight corruption where he found it and make a difference. I'm assuming that's why he did it. I can't imagine why else. But of late, it's become a little bit more... almost incoherent. And after his appearance at the ad hoc committee, I mean, of course I cannot trust anything that he says, and I don't, simply because he gave such a bad account of himself at the ad hoc committee that he's destroyed any credibility he may have had.Alec Hogg (13:21): The thing that started confusing us, and he had been interviewed numerous times on BizNews over the years, was when General Mkhwanazi came out with his, what was it, about 18 months ago. It wasn't long before we got feedback from business people in KwaZulu-Natal. That's our constituency. And they loved him. They know him, they've worked with him, they gave him a great thumbs up. But Paul O'Sullivan made all kinds of allegations against him, and now the two of them, General Mkhwanazi and Paul O'Sullivan, are in some kind of legal defamation suit against each other. What's that all... I mean, you understand the law better than 99% of us. What exactly would be behind that?Glynnis Breytenbach (13:37): Yeah.Glynnis Breytenbach (14:16): You know, I don't know. When he was at the committee, Mr O'Sullivan did, of course, make a lot of statements about General Mkhwanazi. I personally don't know General Mkhwanazi. I mean, he's a KZN policeman. I've never in my career had to do with him. So he's an unknown entity to me, except for the interaction that I had with him at the committee. So I'm unable to form a judgement. It was not sufficient time. I myself had misgivings about the way he chose to impart the information that Sunday. I still have those misgivings, but that we have had an opportunity to clean up quite considerably as a result of it is true. And therefore, you know, overall it is a good thing. I think we've benefited from it. I still wonder why he did it in the way he did, and I wonder why it took so long for him to say it, because he's been a general since 2012. So, you know, why wait until 2025 to make these revelations? That I don't fully understand, but nevertheless, he made them and we benefited from them, and we've had a big clean-up and a shake-up, and hopefully it's going to contribute considerably towards cleaning up the criminal justice system. So overall, it's a good thing that he did it and, you know, we need to deal with what he told us. Why Paul and he don't get along, I have no idea. But, you know, there are a lot of people that Paul doesn't get along with for a variety of reasons, and it was clear to me that there are a lot of people that General Mkhwanazi doesn't get along with for a variety of reasons, and I suppose that goes for all of us. And so, you know, the backwards and forwards of a defamation suit, the only people who are going to win there are lawyers. So I certainly wouldn't bother.Alec Hogg (16:18): Yeah, and you'd think that the two of them would be fully aware of that. But anyway, moving on to the other person who was arrested, the deputy commissioner of police, [around] the same time that Andrea Johnson was arrested. Now, you said you weren't surprised, and I'd love you just to elaborate a little bit on that. But the arrest of... that's not every day that the deputy commissioner of police gets arrested, General Sibiya in this instance. Help those of us who are outside of this world understand what's going on here.Glynnis Breytenbach (16:52): Well, you know, it's mind-boggling, so I don't blame anybody for not fully understanding it, and I'm not entirely sure every day that I fully understand it. I mean, we've got to be the only country in the world where the entire top structure of the police has been either fired, suspended or arrested. And that's not a good thing. It's not something to write home about. It's not an achievement. Those people should never have been appointed. There's something seriously wrong with the system that allows that calibre of person to rise to the positions that they rose to. The system should have sifted them long before this and sorted them out and got rid of them. It cannot be that we have a system that allows that calibre of person to rise to the positions that they have achieved. And it's not only Shadrack Sibiya, it's all of those who have been arrested and suspended and fired. And it's shocking and deeply concerning that we have a situation like that in the South African Police Service. How will you fight corruption if the entire top structure of the South African Police Service is corrupt? Where do you go with your corruption matters if everybody at the top is busy doing favours for and getting kickbacks from the very criminals that you're trying to put in jail? It's no wonder we are where we are. You know, an entire reset of not only the South African Police, but, in my view, the entire criminal justice system, that includes the police service, the National Prosecuting Authority, the judiciary, both the lower and higher courts, and correctional services, needs a reset. We have to make it more effective. We have to make it more efficient. And I use those words quite loosely in this context, because effective and efficient has long left by the back door. But we have to rebuild those systems to make our criminal justice system work again. At the moment, it doesn't.Alec Hogg (18:57): Glynnis, what about the R1.6 billion charge against Angelo Agrizzi? Now, I'll just tell you again, from a person on the outside. When I read the initial papers at the Zondo Commission, I thought, well, here's a guy who's had a Damascene experience, because he said he had. He said he died, he met God, and then he decided he had to come and confess all his sins, and he came back. But...Glynnis Breytenbach (19:19): Please. Yeah. Sure.Alec Hogg (19:26): Yeah.Alec Hogg (19:30): Yeah, you've seen this come and go so many times, so you would have seen straight through his story. But what happens to this guy now? He's got assets all over the world, he's worth more than Croesus, and it appears as though he's, well, maybe played a lot of people in the racing industry.Glynnis Breytenbach (19:51): So, you know, I'm hesitant to express my views on Mr Agrizzi, although I have expressed them to him in person. I think that the plea bargain that was entered into with him is an absolute disgrace. It's a travesty of justice. He's never going to give evidence against anybody. He will always say that he's too ill to testify. There was no upside for the National Prosecuting Authority in that plea bargain. The sentence that he received is laughable. And if I had been prosecuting at that time, I would never have accepted it. Never, ever have accepted it. Shamila Batohi was, in fact, as it happens, in front of the ad hoc committee on the afternoon it was announced, and I could barely speak, I was so angry. I was assured by her and others that the wisdom of it would become clear. Well, here we are a year down the line and it has not become clear. Mr Agrizzi is really nothing but a crook, and the asset forfeiture judgement against him is well deserved.Alec Hogg (21:03): Mm.Alec Hogg (21:10): Can they actually get those assets if they're sitting outside of South Africa?Glynnis Breytenbach (21:13): Yes, we can.Alec Hogg (21:16): So he shouldn't be resting easy.Glynnis Breytenbach (21:19): He shouldn't be resting at all.Alec Hogg (21:22): Okay. Someone else... you don't like to have people in acting positions. The [Minister] of police now has been acting for, is it a year? So what happens next?Glynnis Breytenbach (21:39): Well, it's crazy. I mean, you know as well as I do that if you're acting in someone's position, it's not yours. It's like driving someone's car. It's not yours. You drive it cautiously, more cautiously perhaps than your own. You don't take decisions to have it resprayed a different colour, that type of thing. You're more cautious. You're cognisant of the fact that it's not your chair that you're sitting in and that somebody else may come along with different ideas to yours. And so you don't want to back anybody into a corner. And that is the nature of an acting position. And so it's undesirable. It's a short-period solution to a problem. But a year is not a short period, and it's not a solution. So Senzo Mchunu should be fired and Firoz Cachalia should be appointed. It's very simple. If he's good enough to act, he's good enough to be appointed. Appoint him and let him make the changes that he wants to make. Let him do the restructuring that he thinks should be done. Don't give him a broken walking stick and then expect him to do a great job.Alec Hogg (22:52): Why is it happening like this? What is the reason behind it that he hasn't been appointed and Senzo hasn't been fired?Glynnis Breytenbach (23:02): Because, well, you know, bearing in mind that Senzo is getting paid a full salary for every month that he sits at home playing tiddlywinks, or whatever else it is that he's doing at home. And Cachalia is also being paid. So really the police budget, that really is used and abused for things that do not matter, is once again being used and abused. You go, as I do, to police stations on oversight on a very regular basis. You will find cars that have got 300,000 and 400,000 kilometres on the clock that haven't been replaced because there's no budget, that serve communities of 300,000 and 400,000 people with two cars that sometimes go and sometimes don't. That's not delivering a service. Can they get more cars? No, because there's no budget. They took delivery of a whole range of new cars just the other day. But it's a drop in the ocean. It looks very impressive when they're all parked there and lined up. But you divide that among the districts that the police serve and you'll see that it's not even one per district. It's not even close. It's maybe a third of a car per three districts, and that's not very useful. And so the police have to go into areas that are not safe with cars that are not roadworthy, that could break down at any moment. They have to travel far distances with cars that are not reliable. You can't expect people to be enthusiastic and do a good job when they're treated in that fashion.Alec Hogg (24:38): So I guess it all depends on leadership. And now there's a proposal that General Mkhwanazi becomes head of the Hawks and thereafter perhaps head of the police, the commissioner. What's your... do you support that?Glynnis Breytenbach (24:46): Yes.Glynnis Breytenbach (24:50): Yes, well, that was predictable. I'm not really in a position to say whether or not I support it, because I'm not sure who else is in the running. Not that anybody will ask my view, let me hasten to add. But there could probably be worse appointments. I could certainly think of a number of worse appointments, and I might have to think a long time before I could think of a better one.Alec Hogg (25:08): Really?Alec Hogg (25:25): Provisional numbers in these elections have the ANC around 32%. How about the justice cluster? Let's just say that the ANC and the DA get into the Government of National Unity, there's a different conversation that's now put on the table, and they call you in and say, "Glynnis, what are your thoughts on the justice cluster, how it should be fixed in South Africa?" I hope I'm not grasping at straws here, but I think the public of South Africa have said, "We've sent a message. Now we want action, please." What would you do?Glynnis Breytenbach (26:09): There's a lot that can be done. Fixing the criminal justice system is not a short-term project. It's a long-term project. It's taken 32 years to dismantle a system that worked relatively well. And in its place, we now have a system that does not work well at all. And by that, I don't mean that everybody in it is useless. There are thousands of prosecutors, thousands of policemen, many judges, many correctional services employees who go to work every day and do their very best. But the environment in which they function is completely dysfunctional, and it doesn't matter how hard they try, they can't make it work on their own. So it's a long-term project, but there are things that you can do in the short term, immediately, to improve it. There are things in the medium term that you can do to improve it greatly. And a long-term strategy will ensure that in five, six, seven years we will have a functioning, fully functioning criminal justice system of which we can be proud. But it's not something that can be fixed overnight. And the changes would have to be radical and drastic.Alec Hogg (27:20): Such as?Glynnis Breytenbach (27:22): Well, in my view, the system itself, and again, I want to stress, by this I don't mean every individual in it, but the system itself is corrupt, both systemically and endemically. And to get rid of that, you've got to do a reset. And to do the reset, you've got to get rid of the culture of corruption, which will require very drastic action. You'd have to very effectively, and without any mercy, remove any sort of whiff of corruption from all of those institutions, which will require hard decisions.Alec Hogg (28:07): Hmm. Twelve months from now, who's in jail? Who's running the Hawks? And does IDAC still exist?Glynnis Breytenbach (28:17): Perhaps General Mkhwanazi will be running the Hawks. I don't have a real difficulty with that. Whether or not I agree with all of his views is irrelevant. He appears to be a man who can make decisions and then follow them through. So possibly he will be running the Hawks. It takes more than one man to fix an institution, and it will take more than him to fix the Hawks. But I'm sure that he can make a very effective start. Who will be in prison? Sure... If I could have my way, it should be a large portion of the top structure of police and other criminal justice institutions. And sadly, a large portion of the National Assembly. Very sadly. And what was the third question?Alec Hogg (29:13): Does IDAC still exist?Glynnis Breytenbach (29:15): In my storybook, not at all. It cannot exist. It must be closed down. I never supported it, as you will know. The Democratic Alliance voted in support of it in the National Assembly when the Act was passed, but we made it very clear that we didn't think it was a solution to the problem. We never have, and we still don't. It is not a solution to the problem. The National Prosecuting Authority is systemically and endemically corrupt. So you take a microcosm of it and you set it up inside itself as IDAC, and then you expect to get a piece of that institution that somehow rids itself of corruption and works optimally. I mean, that is worse than believing in the Easter Bunny.Alec Hogg (30:03): Glynnis, are you optimistic that things can move in the right direction? There's a lot of excitement now, after the election results as they're coming through, that we may be finally changing in South Africa for the better. Are you an optimist?Glynnis Breytenbach (30:20): I'm absolutely an optimist. I've always been optimistic about this country. I remain optimistic. I'm not here because I have nowhere else to go. I'm here because there's nowhere else I want to be. I believe that South Africa is going to be absolutely great. It's going to stun everybody. I've always thought so. And we're getting there. Every day we take three steps forward and maybe two steps back, but eventually that one step that we gain will get us there. And it's getting quicker and quicker now. And these elections are fabulous. The ANC is sitting on 32%. It's about 20% more than they deserve. We will fix this. Eventually, they may well come to the realisation... It's a thing that they, I think, grapple with and really struggle with. But they may well come to the realisation that they are no longer the majority party, and they can no longer do as they please. I know it's hard. I see them every day struggle with the concept. But they'll get there. And we will fix this country, and it can be fixed.Alec Hogg (31:29): DA spokesperson on justice and the chief whip of the party, Glynnis Breytenbach. And I'm Alec Hogg with your BizNews Edge.