IN SHORT: Claims that Shamila Batohi, the retiring head of South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority, has issued a “brutal assessment of her time in office” are false. They were originally published by a website which mixes sometimes plagiarised but genuine news stories with opinion and outright disinformation. This story about Batohi is a fake.
“You think you've heard it all, but then a story comes along that makes you just shake your head.” This is the first sentence of a Facebook post about Shamila Batohi, head of South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority, the government agency responsible for state prosecutions.
Batohi will retire from the position in January 2026 because of a constitutional age limit of 65. No NPA head has served a full term since the organisation was founded in 1998, with several appointments invalidated or otherwise overturned.
Batohi may have inherited a fraught position, but she has not issued a statement comparing her time in office to horror films like Dawn of the Dead, or revealing that she has resorted to “heavy-duty prescription pills” and “weekly blood transfusions” because of the stress of the job.
These quotes have been fabricated by a Facebook page and website which has published other false claims. The owner of the site told News24 that the claims about Batohi were “based on verified sources and information available at the time”, but this is not true.
The National Prosecuting Authority’s official ...
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