ActionSA noted on Wednesday that to ensure the Investigating Directorate (ID) is adequately capacitated, President Cyril Ramaphosa must intervene by directing the Department of Justice to finalise the implementation of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Amendment Act.

The party reiterated the urgent need to safeguard the NPA’s independence, which it said must include measures to significantly increase its funding and allocate its budget directly from the Division of Revenue Act, rather than through the Department of Justice.

ActionSA parliamentary caucus leader Athol Trollip said his party would write to Ramaphosa to demand action over the justice department’s obstructive “kneecapping” of the NPA, with reports that the NPA's ID, established specifically to probe corruption-related crimes uncovered by the State Capture Inquiry, had been blocked from accessing crucial State capture evidence.

“ActionSA is outraged to learn that the ID has apparently been maliciously prevented from accessing the database containing troves of vital State capture evidence due to the Department of Justice's failure to maintain the database, this despite nearly 20 letters from the NPA pleading for access, which evidently have gone unanswered,” Trollip said.

He described a shocking display of at least “wilful incompetence or, at worst, deliberate obstruction”, that now compromised the ID’s ability to use the State capture reports to successfully prosecute cases of "egregious corruption".

He added that this outrage was compounded by the fact that the Minister of Justice had yet to respond to related correspondence and to finalise the implementation of the NPA Amendment Act, which was assented to by Ramaphosa earlier this year.

ActionSA wants the Justice Department to answer for what it calls a "colossal failure", given that the final State capture reports, which cost taxpayers R1-billion to produce, were handed to Ramaphosa over two years ago.

“… yet South Africans have yet to see a single implicated individual charged, prosecuted and in orange overalls,” Trollip said.

ActionSA said it was determined to fight to restore the rule of law in South Africa and ensure that the country’s justice system adopted a zero-tolerance approach toward corruption, which it said had ravaged the country and continued to do so.