Scorpions were disbanded after stepping on important toes, eNCA broadcast hears
A former Scorpions investigator who went on to head the Hawks is described as a clean and dedicated officer whose unit was shut down as the politics of the time turned against it.
The Scorpions were disbanded because the unit had begun stepping on the toes of important people, according to a discussion broadcast by eNCA.
The unit could not confine itself to small cases. It pursued the nobody cases and it also pursued people who were important, and the politics of the time were such that the Scorpions needed to go.
That assessment was put forward in the broadcast, which examined what was lost when the Scorpions were shut down. The conversation traced the career of Lieutenant General Shadrach Sabia, who worked inside the elite unit and cracked large corruption cases in Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape before it was disbanded.
The broadcast describes Sabia as a talented, dedicated and hardworking officer who was cracking cases and making his way to the top. His recruitment into the Scorpions, the discussion suggests, showed that the people running the system had already noticed his level of capability.
According to the broadcast, the cases the unit put together were complicated, but by the time they reached court the case was clear and shut. That, it states, was the reputation the unit built.
When the Scorpions were disbanded, Sabia moved to the new unit, the Hawks, and at one point headed it. The broadcast places him in a strategic position at that stage and describes him as a clean cop by all means.
The Hawks, in the broadcast’s account, did not carry a strong reputation. They were widely seen as an underwhelming replacement for the Scorpions. The discussion notes that some columnists at the time wrote that the Hawks were dangerous, and characterises the replacement unit as the doves to the Scorpions’ scorpions.
The broadcast does not state who ordered the disbandment, when it took place, or what has happened to Sabia since.
Source: eNCA (YouTube), What was lost when the scorpions were disbanded? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbgMmnR23cI
