Ramaphosa names Adrian Mopp Western Cape prosecutions chief

Advocate Adrian Mopp is the Western Cape’s new Director of Public Prosecutions, appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa with effect from 10 September.

Mopp has been the province’s deputy director of public prosecutions since 2009, and the appointment moves him from the number two position in the province to the top of it. The President’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, said the President consulted the ministers whose portfolios touch the National Prosecuting Authority before deciding. Magwenya said Mopp’s prosecutorial and legal experience runs past 30 years, that he has spent more than 23 of those in the NPA’s senior management service, and that he was admitted as an advocate of the High Court in 1993.

What the post carries

The Western Cape DPP directs prosecutions across the province’s courts, from the busy magistrates’ courts in Cape Town, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha to the High Court in Cape Town. The office decides which matters proceed, which are diverted, and how the province’s prosecutors are deployed. Its decisions are felt by people waiting on case numbers, by complainants who have laid charges, and by the police whose dockets either move or stall.

Mopp’s long service inside the NPA means he arrives with the office’s procedures, its personnel and its case load already familiar. That is a different starting point from an outside appointment, and it is the argument the Presidency is making for him.

The appointment fills a post that has to be occupied for the province’s prosecuting machinery to run at full authority. The National Prosecuting Authority Act requires the President to appoint a DPP for each division of the High Court, and the Western Cape division is one of the country’s heaviest. A permanent head gives the office a settled chain of command, and it gives the province’s prosecutors a named person accountable for what the office does and does not take to court.

In the Western Cape, that accountability is concrete. The province’s courts carry organised crime matters, gang-related prosecutions on the Cape Flats, commercial crime, and a steady volume of gender-based violence cases. Each of those depends on decisions made at the top of the DPP’s office about resources, about which cases get priority, and about how quickly matters move from arrest to trial.

What happens next

Mopp took up the position on 10 September. The office’s next public accounting for its performance will come through the NPA’s reporting on conviction rates, case backlogs and court rolls in the Western Cape, and through the prosecutions it announces in the months ahead.

Source: SABC News (website), Ramaphosa appoints Adv Adrian Mopp as Western Cape DPP