The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is reviewing whether it should have greater operational and financial independence from the Department of Justice, with possible legislative changes expected to be considered during the next reporting period.

The review was disclosed in the NPA’s 2025/2026 annual report, published at the end of September. The report says management decided in February to revive earlier work on the “possible enhancement of the NPA’s operational and financial independence”. A legal team has since been appointed to examine possible reforms.

The issue goes back nearly two decades. Until 2009, serious corruption investigations were handled by the Scorpions, a specialist unit housed within the NPA that combined investigative and prosecutorial capacity. Parliament abolished the Scorpions and shifted their investigative work to the Hawks, a police unit.

That decision led to a series of Constitutional Court cases known as the Glenister litigation. In 2011, the court found that legislation governing the Hawks did not provide sufficient independence and ordered Parliament to correct it. The court later stressed that South Africa needed an anti-corruption body with adequate structural and operational independence.

Government subsequently created the Investigating Directorate inside the NPA and later replaced it with the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC), which was established permanently in law in 2024. IDAC restored investigative capacity to the NPA for serious corruption matters.

The latest NPA review does not propose complete separation from the executive. Its annual report says any reform would preserve the constitutional provision giving the justice minister final responsibility over the prosecuting authority.

Paul Hoffman, a director of Accountability Now who was involved in the Glenister litigation, argues that this does not go far enough. He says the Constitutional Court requirement that anti-corruption machinery be “outside executive control” cannot be properly met while IDAC remains within the NPA and the NPA remains institutionally tied to the Justice Department.

Hoffman instead supports the creation of a new Chapter Nine institution dedicated to corruption and organised crime. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has proposed such an anti-corruption commission, while the uMkhonto weSizwe Party favours returning criminal investigations to the South African Police Service and leaving prosecutions to the NPA.

For now, the NPA is considering a narrower reform focused on its own financial and operational independence. The broader argument is whether South Africa can strengthen the institutions it already has, or whether fighting serious corruption requires an entirely separate body protected from executive control.