James was speaking at Thursday’s sitting of the Ad Hoc Committee investigating the allegations made by SAPS KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Commissioner, Lt Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.
Mkhwanazi wrapped up his testimony at around midnight on Wednesday.
James said that his testimony was very effective.
“What I picked up is the fact that General Mkhwanazi's responses to many of the questions were very drawn out, he covered it extensively.
“I found that his answers were really thorough. It sort of gave us a lead for the follow-up questions. On the whole, I think it actually went well,” James said.
She said that when Mkhwanazi held his briefing on 6 July, the first thing that drew her attention was his comment: “Many of our children are being arrested for crimes that they do when they're not in their right frames of mind”.
“I needed to understand that. It's almost as if these communities are then being set up intentionally, because he said we're being fed drugs, and now, because of the impact of feeding our children drugs, it means that they become murderers.
“...Those people then cannot have jobs, and that just sort of deepens the socio-economic conditions in our communities, and it was important for me to show that.”
James said that Thursday’s session highlighted that what she is focused on bringing up before Masemola is the death of Deokaran, who was the chief director of financial accounting at the Gauteng Department of Health, when she was killed on August 23, 2021.
It is alleged that a hit was put on the mother of one after she blew the whistle on fraud and corruption at Tembisa Hospital. Deokaran sustained multiple gunshot wounds.
Last week, Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head, Advocate Andy Mothibi, led a briefing and release of the interim report. Mothibi said that the evidence revealed a number of maldistributions and other public procurement irregularities.
“This indeed will be described as a devastating plunder of the public funds, which we found in our probe. The investigation has uncovered, up to date, three coordinated syndicates responsible for the loss of over R2 billion," said Mothibi.
James said that the country can never lose sight of Deokaran’s situation.
“I think if anything, someone needs to be held accountable for that. SAPS knew the sort of sensitivity of the information that she had shared; they should have known better.
“I think if anything, we owe her family an apology, and we now have to ask General Masemola, what are the plans? What are the current plans in place and processes to protect witnesses of the calibre, such as Babita?”
James said that the proceedings are important for people to watch so that they understand and make proper decisions come the next election, “because we see that the rot is politically aligned”. By
