and which tinkered with the hawks in an attempt to comply with the constitutional court ruling speaker tinkering with the wheels of a car that has no engine is a futile exercise it will not put this fourth democratic parliament on the road into the history books as having achieved something extraordinary and we did have that opportunity but it was an opportunity missed that conglomeration of saps units which the ministry decided to name the hawks as though it was everyman’s answer to the scorpions certainly does good work on priority crime however here’s the rub when it comes to looking at corruption in high places its role has to date been extremely limited the reasons for this are legion but to sum it up it is a body within the saps its members are part of a ranked structure where juniors take and obey orders from their superiors and their superiors are politicians when the bills shutting down the scorpions were compiled we were offered four options and they were actually taken to the anc caucus for a vote by members who had never spent a single second in the deliberations or on the police portfolio committee every attempt at creating a unit that was not the scorpions but that still had a modicum of independence was thrown out and so it was left to the saps to try to sell the hawks as a body that the south african public believed were independent they failed at that job miserably as a country we did have an independent unit but because it stung various top politicians some of them in this house today they went from hero to zero in the anc’s eyes as a nation the scorpions made us proud of their conviction record of ninety four percent and their mere presence assured us that the good guys were doing a great job the unit became the bar other nations sought to reach today we stand on the brink of handing the ncop a