Dedication page
1 Academic activist, Robben Island prisoner, 1936–2012, address at the Strini Moodley Memorial Lecture, 2010.
Prologue: Crossing the Border
1 This is the vicinity where Samora Machel’s plane mysteriously crashed on 19 October 1986 inside South African territory, at Mbuzini, possibly brought down by a decoy beacon placed by South African agents.
2 Lomahasha is the village on the Swaziland side.
3 Jeremy Gordin, in Zuma: A Biography (Cape Town, Jonathan Ball, 2008), p. 1, gives a formal and correct interpretation, possibly assisted by Zuma himself: ‘I can’t keep quiet when someone pretends to love me with a deceitful smile.’ Perhaps by 2008 Zuma preferred this to the interpretation he gave me in the early 1980s, since by 2008 that meaning would have become too close to the mark.
Chapter 1: Update
1 This was codenamed ‘Operation Marion’ and led to the charging of General Magnus Malan and other apartheid-era generals in 1995 on murder charges in Natal in the 1980s. They were acquitted owing to lack of evidence.
2 Gwala was a veteran leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and had been imprisioned with Mandela on Roben Island. Nzimande later came to prominence as general secretary of the SACP.
3 The ANC did not at the time consider itself a political party but rather a national liberation movement.
Chapter 2: Spooks
1 Zulu and Xhosa terms
2 The more formal term is the South African War.
3 Parliamentary Budget Address, 25 May 2007, ‘Emulating the African spies of yesteryear’.
Chapter 3: A Suitable Man
1 See Gordon, Zuma: A Biography, pp 67–8.
2 Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was minister of health and then minister of foreign affairs. Jacob Zuma was member of the Executive Council (MEC) for economic affairs and tourism in the KZN legislature, 1994–9.
Chapter 4: A Long Shadow
1 Whilst there was some talk of Zuma having been linked to Thami Zulu’s sad fate, as the head of ANC intelligence, it was Thabo Mbeki who explained to the TRC that an internal ANC Commission of Inquiry had not made any conclusive findings about that (South African History online: biography of Jacob Zuma). But the Motsuenyane Commission, investigating abuses of detainees expressed unhappiness ‘with Zuma’s explanations of events that took place and condemned him for not exercising proper supervision’ (ibid) and see TRC, Final Report, Ch. 6, p 242.
There are many references to Thami Zulu’s incarceration and Zuma’s responsibility as the ANC’s head of intelligence, which Zuma has never responded to. See: David Beresford, Truth is a Strange Fruit (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2010); Stephen Ellis, External Mission: The ANC in Exile 1960–1990 (London, Hurst, 2012); Kenneth Good, ‘How the killing of Thami Zulu contradicts Zuma’s claims’, Politics Web, 13 May 2013. Good places credibility on Beresford’s assumptions that Zuma’s silences ‘justify an assumption, if not presumption of guilt’, which I believe is justified in raising with regard to Thami Zulu’s 14-month detention and incarceration in miserable conditions. See also: ‘Jacob Zuma is by most accounts a useless manager’, Business Day, 21 March 2009 (with the comment, ‘Its time he [Zuma] felt the pain of Zulu’s family and told them and the country what happened to their son.’); Paul Trewhela, ‘Jacob Zuma, Mbokodo and the death of Thami Zulu’, MoneyWeb, 13 February, 2009; Christi ven der Westhuizen, ‘The Z factor: Is the real Jacob Zuma emerging?’, Mail & Guardian, 25 November, 2009
Chapter 5: Working-Class Hero
1 With a changed policy on supplying the antiretroviral medicines in 2004 when life expectancy was 52, today it is 64. From a near zero of black south Africas getting the medication in 2004, nearly 4 million do today
2 Adriaan Basson, Zuma Exposed (Cape Town, Jonathan Ball, 2012), p. 139..
Chapter 6: A Question of Morality
1 According to Roger Southall writing in The Conversation, PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2014 and 2016 recorded the Sandton bourgeoisie as the world’s most economically criminal, ahead of France and Kenya.
2 Shortly before his death in May 2005 Tony Holiday made an observation in the Cape Times under the heading ‘Block Zuma, or SA courts disaster’: ‘If this country is to achieve its goal of permanent First World status and retain its rank as repository of Africa’s hopes for economic and political renewal, then Jacob Zuma must not become our next president … Mbeki’s chief difficulty is to find a way of stopping Zuma without doing irreparable damage to the ANC … As the drama unfolds, Mbeki may well find that he has to choose between party unity and national survival.’ See Neil Marais, ‘On Tony Holiday’, Daily Maverick, 27 September 2017.
3 Maharaj and Moe Shaik accused Ngcuka of being an apartheid-era agent, but the Harms Commission cleared Ngcuka of this charge.
Chapter 7: Wolf Boys
1 On 20 September, four days after I interviewed the trio, Inspector General Ngcakani began his investigation in terms of the Intelligence Services Oversight Act, 1994. The information I have recounted and later reveal appeared in the media and in a report Ngcakani placed in the public domain: Executive Summary of Final Report of an Investigation into Operations Carried Out by NIA on Mr S Macozoma – Extended Terms of Reference on the Authenticity of the Allegedly Intercepted E-mails, Media Release, 23 March 2006.
Chapter 8: A Long Night
1 These emails and others later cited are all in the public domain.
2 Sir Walter Scott’s poem ‘Marmion’, which refers to a forged letter implicating an innocent person in treason.
3 David Beresford, Ten Men Dead (London, HarperCollins, 1987).
Chapter 9: On Billy’s Trail
1 The initial 1976 group had trained in Angola while I was still in London, and he had moved on to Lusaka, Zambia, as part of the Youth League, when I transferred to Angola. Later he was based in London for ANC intelligence while I was in Maputo and, then, Lusaka with MK. And he was originally in government intelligence (first as deputy and then as chief of SASS) while I served in defence and then water and forestry.
2 Mail & Guardian Online, 14 October 2005.
Chapter 10: The Plot Thickens
1 Executive Summary of the IG’s Final Report – Media Release, 23 March 2006.
2 On the information at hand I concluded it was necessary to ascertain whether Avani was linked to the Macozoma surveillance operation. Accordingly, I extended the IG’s terms of reference to include this. It had been a quick check with President Mbeki to ascertain that he knew nothing of Avani.
Chapter 11: Services Day
1 Strategic Communications was a unit of the apartheid-era security agencies, specialising in disinformation, character assassination and smearing of opponents.
2 ‘Sinister e-mails slammed’ and ‘Spygate probe widens’, News24, 23 October 2005.
3 Address by Minister Kasrils, Musanda, 21 October 2005.
4 Up to the termination of my term in office on 30 September 2008, the president’s speech could be viewed on the website of the Ministry of Intelligence Services at www.intelligence.gov.za/Speeches.html, and also that of the Presidency.
Chapter 12: Knocked Down by a Feather
1 The NEC met at Esselen Park outside Johannesburg on the weekend of 18–20 November 2005.
2 Sam Sole and Nic Dawes, with Rapule Tabane, ‘Why is Billy Masetlha still at large?’, Mail & Guardian, 31 March 2006.
3 The email extracts in this chapter have been sourced from a Mail & Guardian report, dated 15 December 2005 by Sam Sole and Nic Dawes. Their story included this caveat: ‘The following are extracts from the alleged e-mail exchanges, with, in some instances, the names of the alleged senders deleted. In publishing them, the Mail & Guardian in no way implies that they are authentic communications.’
4 Vusi Pikoli, head of the NPA, and Manne Dipico, former ANC premier of Northern Cape province and a business associate of Kgalema Motlanthe.
5 Sandi Majali, a business associate who had featured in the media in connection with a notorious oil deal.
6 Joel Netshitenzhe, regarded as a loyal Mbeki intellectual, who headed the policy unit during the Mbeki Presidency.
7 The NPA’s crack investigating prosecutor.
8 Mhlanga and Njenje.
9 This and the next email were in the Kgalema dossier but did not appear in the Mail & Guardian report of 15 December 2005. I was, however, able to obtain, in my personal capacity, all emails relevant to myself in order to analyse them for the IG’s inquiry. These were not classified documents.
Chapter 13: Connecting the Dots
1 Caxton CTP Publishers and Printers fund the Caxton Chair of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, held at the time by Harber.
2 I cannot recall whether I referred to Zuma at this or a subsequent NEC meeting when we discussed the IG’s final report. The emails were discussed at two NEC meetings.
3 Executive Summary of the Final report, Media Release, 23 March 2006.
Chapter 14: Emails Unlocked
1 Sunday Argus, 31 May 2009. The two companies were Multi-Consult Technologies, a BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) information technology company in South Africa, and Paradyne Networks, based in the US.
2 The Kwasizabantu Mission, near Kranskop, KwaZulu-Natal. Interesting background on the mission, and its political positioning while Kunene was working there, can be found on www.ksb-alert.com/confession/ and www.ksb-alert.com/.
3 South West Africa People’s Organisation.
4 Sunday Argus, 31 May 2009, reported Koos Greeff alleging the Kwasizabantu Mission was used for training self-defence units, and the existence of a close relationship between some church members and apartheid-era military intelligence.
5 From the IG’s Executive Summary of Final Report of an Investigation into Operations Carried Out by NIA on Mr S Macozoma – Extended Terms of Reference on the Authenticity of the Allegedly Intercepted E-mails, Media Release, 23 March 2006, posted on www.orgi.gov.za.
6 ‘Dit gaan baie goed met my, General, ek hoop dit gaan ook goed met U … ons het a groot problem die kant.’ The correct Afrikaans would be: ‘Dit gaan baie goed met my, Generaal, ek hoop dit gaan ook goed met u … ons het ’n groot probleem aan hierdie kant.’ No literate Afrikaner would use the capital ‘U’ in addressing another person, for that is reserved for addressing God. The lower case ‘u’ is applied when addressing a person.
7 A hard copy because the emails were presented in print-out form.
8 Muzi Kunene’s identity was not furnished in the Executive Summary of the Final Report but became publicly known through media reports and when he stood trial.
9 Such as Njenje and Mhlanga.
10 Executive Summary of Final Report of an Investigation into Operations Carried Out by NIA on Mr S Macozoma – Extended Terms of Reference on the Authenticity of the Allegedly Intercepted E-mails, Media Release, 23 March 2006, posted on www.orgi.gov.za.
11 There were fourteen counts against Masetlha, such as failing to report to the minister on the surveillance of Saki Macozoma; misleading the minister and the investigative team; failing to exercise the required degree of management and oversight over the surveillance operation; sanctioning the unlawful surveillance of Macozoma, Tony Leon and Anton Harber; instructing the unlawful interception of voice communications without a judge’s authorisation; outsourcing intelligence functions to a private entity (Kunene) without proper registration; participation with Muzi Kunene in the manufacturing and distribution of the allegedly intercepted emails; misrepresenting the authenticity of the emails and knowingly using fake emails to direct and inform intelligence projects; obtaining a financial benefit for a source (i.e. Kunene) from NIA based on an unlawful activity; and so on.
Gravest among the charges were failure to inform the president and minister of the emails despite their gravity and impact on national security; and seeking to mislead the president and minister through the inclusion of knowingly fabricated emails in the Presidential Special Investigative Task Team Report.
Charges against Bob Mhlanga centred on transgressions related to the Macozoma surveillance operation: misleading the investigative team; failure to exercise management and oversight; and failure to comply with mandatory operational and authorisation procedures.
Charges against Funi Madlala related to his role concerning the emails and Kunene: as an accomplice of Masetlha in misrepresenting the authenticity of the emails; as an accomplice of Kunene in the fabrication of the emails; misleading the IG about his relationship with Kunene; and obtaining a financial benefit for Kunene based on an unlawful activity.
The IG noted that his investigation provided sufficient prima facie evidence to warrant criminal charges against various individuals. He pointed out, however, that an outcome as to individual culpability would ultimately depend on further evidence obtained and gathered through criminal investigation. These criminal charges related to defrauding NIA of R152,000 paid to Kunene; instructing the unlawful interception of voice communications without proper authorisation of a designated judge (Masetlha); and unlawful interception of data communications (Kunene).
12 Unfortunately this was not followed through.
Chapter 15: Hook, Line and Sinker
1 The Star, 24 March 2006.
2 ‘Why is Billy Masetlha still at large?’, Mail & Guardian, 26 March 2006.
3 Paul Vecchiatto, ‘Zuma e-mails “the work of amateurs”’, ITWeb, 29 March 2006.
4 ‘Hoax email saga far from over’, IOL Online, 22 March 2007, www.iol.co.za/news/politics/hoax-email-saga-far-from-over-319935.
5 Announced at an NEC meeting on 25 March 2006, following the release of the IG’s report and the dismissal of Masetlha.
6 Motlanthe insisted that the report be handed back at the end of proceedings.
7 ‘Spy-war emails: What they really say’, Mail & Guardian, 15 December 2005.
Chapter 16: In Cold Blood
1 Madlala was NIA’s cyber unit manager under Masetlha.
2 Hanti Otto, ‘Kunene guilty of shooting son’, The Witness, 17 October 2013.
3 ‘Kunene gets life for murder of estate agent’, www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-29-kunene-gets-life-for-murder-of-estate-agent; SAPA, 29 May 2009.
4 A murderous anti-Swapo police unit that served apartheid in Namibia. Koevoet literally translates from Afrikaans as ‘crowbar’.
5 The Pamodzi group, established in 1979, is a South African investment company (although the name is imported – it means ‘togetherness’ in Zambia’s dominant schiNyanja language). Although well established by 1990, as a construction company building two-rooms-and-a-garage township houses, it benefitted greatly from the achievement of political democracy.
6 ‘Meet Mr E’, Mail & Guardian, 25 November 2005.
7 Inspector General’s Final Report of an Investigation into Operations Carried Out by NIA on Mr S Macozoma – Extended Terms of Reference on the Authenticity of the Allegedly Intercepted E-mails, Finding and Recommendations, pp. 122–3, 8 March 2006.
Chapter 18: Kanga Man
1 Elizabeth Skeen, ‘The rape of a trial: Jacob Zuma, Aids, conspiracy and tribalism in neo-liberal, post-apartheid South Africa’ (BA thesis, 2007, Princeton University), www.amandlandawonye.wikispaces.com/2007 and see also Jeremy Gordin, Zuma: A Biography (Cape Town, Jonathan Ball, 2008).
2 The term ‘bunga bunga’ was popularised by the Italian media during the 2011 judicial investigation into Silvio Berlusconi’s underage prostitution charges.
3 Gordin, Zuma, pp. 154-5.
4 Originally an African garment worn by both men and women, similar to a sarong, and also known as a kitenge.
5 Jacques Depelchin, Silences in African History (Dar es Salaam, Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2005), pp. 4 and 21. I am grateful to the respected law academic and struggle veteran Raymond Suttner for his comprehensive review of the trial and for bringing Depelchin’s work to my attention.
6 Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research workshop on ‘The arts of human rights’ on Thursday, 31 July 2014. Yacoob was answering a question and gave this answer.
Chapter 19: The Dogs of War
1 Fellow NEC members.
2 I believe I once challenged him in the Mail & Guardian but have failed to trace the item.
3 The so-called Meiring Report was drawn up by Defence Intelligence and passed on directly to President Mandela. It was slickly written and alleged that General Bantu Holomisa, Winnie Mandela and General Siphiwe Nyanda – next in line to succeed General Georg Meiring as head of the defence force – were plotting a violent revolution aimed at overthrowing Mandela. It was alleged that Robert McBride, formerly MK, was smuggling arms into the country from Mozambique for the rebels. The cunning nature of the report was that the authors had McBride under surveillance and had their Mozambican agent entice him into a meeting in Maputo. At the same time the report was handed to Mandela, the trap for McBride was sprung, and he was arrested by security personnel in that country, to whom ‘evidence’ had been leaked that he was looking for arms. A commission found that the report was false and Meiring was removed from office, although there was no evidence that he was part of the plot, apart from handing the report to Mandela.
4 From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Actually, either I put this down incorrectly or she was wrong. The phrase is ‘Cry “Havoc!”, and let slip the dogs of war’, delivered by Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 1, line 273. In the scene, Antony is alone with Julius Caesar’s bloody corpse, shortly after the assassination by Brutus and other senators.
Chapter 20: Polokwane Tsunami
1 Leonard McCarthy in a discussion with the author, December 2007, just prior to charges being laid against Jacob Zuma.
2 This cluster also included the ministers of correctional services (formerly prisons) and defence.
3 Vusi Pikoli, My Second Initiation: The Memoir of Vusi Pikoli (Johannesburg, Picador Africa, 2013).
4 Ibid., p. 274.
5 Pikoli was subsequently cleared by the Ginwala Commission.
6 Jacques Mallet du Pan, French journalist and monarchist during the 1789 revolution. The full quote, published in 1793, is: ‘Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.’
7 The ANC’s constitution allowed this, unlike the country’s constitution which permitted only two terms in office. Mbeki’s move was seen as wishing to control from Luthuli House whoever became the nation’s president. A crucial argument against, apart from those who disliked him, was the need to avoid what the ANC termed ‘two centres of power’. There were those among his supporters – I was one – who urged him to have a ‘Plan B’ – a dependable candidate in his place, but he refused to listen.
8 There were three-year intervals between national conferences until Mafeking, when it was resolved that from then on these would be five-yearly.
9 ‘Bring me my machine-gun’
10 Steven Friedman, ‘The person may change, but the policy lingers on’, Mail & Guardian, 11 December 2007: ‘An analysis of audited ANC membership figures produced by … Idasa’s Jonathan Faull shows that most of the growth in ANC membership since the last audit came from rural areas.’
11 See Kgalema’s comment on the 53rd ANC National Conference in Mangaung, Daily Maverick, 8–9 April 2017, where he refers to inflated membership and problems with accurate audits prevailing even at that later date.
12 Mosibudi Mangena, ‘Dead calm in the eye of the storm’, Cape Times, 21 September 2009, described Mbeki being recalled as state president in September 2008.
13 Interviewed in the documentary Behind the Rainbow, produced by Egyptian filmmaker Jihan el-Tahri.
14 Pierre Barbancey to Ronnie Kasrils, email, 6 July 2017.
15 Khulu Mbatha, Unmasked: Why the ANC Failed to Govern (Johannesburg, KMM Review Publishing Company, 2017), p. 123.
Chapter 21: Exit Mbeki
1 28 December 2007.
3 Mosibudi Mangena, ‘Dead calm in the eye of the storm’, Cape Times, 21 September 2009.
4 The Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence, informally known as the Matthews Commission, after its chairperson, Joe Matthews. The other two commissioners were Frene Ginwala and Laurie Nathan. The report could be found on the Mail & Guardian website.
5 www.news24.com, 12 January, 2009
6 Adriaan Basson, Mail & Guardian, 12 January 2009.
Chapter 22: Fake News
1 Possibly on 12 August 2008. I saw it while working in my ministry when Lorna Daniels, my media officer, drew it to my attention.
2 Gordin, Zuma, p. 12.
Chapter 23: Intercepts
1 These were referred to in accompanying papers and affidavits later drawn up by Wille Hofmeyr, head of both the NPA’s Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) and the aforementioned SIU, who was to later submit an affidavit opposing the DA’s long-running application and making allegation about my role. See chapter 27.
2 www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/zuma-refuses-to-resign-saying-west-wants-me-out-20170709-2.
3 www.images.timeslive.co.za/pdf/Spytapes/transcript1.pdf.
4 This is apparently the basis on which Hofmeyr queried whether ‘the man’ was Kasrils and ‘the guy’ was Mbeki. I hadn’t in fact tried to hide anything in 2009, when the media were speculating about Mbeki’s role in the timing of the decision to prosecute Zuma. I explained in an interview with the Mail & Guardian’s Pearlie Joubert that McCarthy was quite probably talking about me when he referred to ‘the guy I mentioned’ (Mail & Guardian, 22–29 May 2009). I had in fact acknowledged this, after the first leak of a few ‘Spy Tape’ transcripts.
Chapter 24: Mastermind
1 I described my situation as ‘refirement’ not ‘retirement’.
2 Sunday Times, 7 November 2014.
Chapter 25: Complaint
1 Business Day and Argus group (twice).
2 The Times, Johannesburg, 8 September 2014.
3 The public advocate strives, in the first place, to get the two sides to settle the dispute amicably, but it became apparent that the Sunday Times was not prepared to give any quarter, so my complaint went to the ombudsman for consideration.
4 All documents relevant to the issue can be downloaded from www.presscouncil.org.za.
5 See www.presscouncil.org.za for the full finding.
6 The Supreme Court of Swaziland, Civil Appeals Case No. 48/213 in the case of African Echo, owners of The Times of Swaziland, and I.G. Simelane, 23 November 2013.
7 With Mr Mahmood Sanglay (press member), and Dr Simphiwe Sesanti, Ms Carol Mohlala and Mr Peter Mann, all public members of the council.
8 The Supreme Court of Swaziland, Civil Appeals Case No. 48/213, paragraph 16, p. 13.
9 Othello, Act 3, Scene 3.
10 The Star, 23 March 2015.
11 I got my apology on the front page of the Sunday Times, 29 March 2015, above the fold –that is, on the top half of the page, alongside the lead story.
This also proved to be a sore point owing to challenges I later made, as I felt that the newspaper had not completely fulfilled the appeals order. As a result, a further hearing on 14 May 2015 took place. I had erred in believing that the original poster had appeared in Cape Town, but this had not been the case. However, I was able to show that no posters had appeared in the Eastern Cape, which the Sunday Times conceded had been an error. The paper was subsequently ordered to place adverts carrying the apology in the regional newspapers. The Sunday Times had upped the ante for this final hearing and Ampofo-Anti and Smuts were reinforced by the redoubtable Dario Milo, regarded as South Africa’s leading expert on media law. At tea prior to commencement of the hearing he genially reminded me that we had once been on a conference panel debating freedom of expression and secrecy. I recalled we had been in general agreement on that occasion.
Chapter 26: Unprecedented Apology
1 Sunday Times, 29 March 2015.
Chapter 27: Informant Unmasked
1 Hofmeyr was dual head of the NPAs AFU and SIU at the time. The other official was Sibongile Mzinyathi. The Sunday Times of 18 November 2012 had previously reported ‘only Hofmeyr apparently believed McCarthy’s “alleged prosecutorial misbehaviour” warranted dropping the charges … Mzinyathi reportedly wanted Zuma’s prosecution to go ahead’. From 1990 Hofmeyr was deputy secretary of the ANC in the Western Cape for a few years, and we organised many marches and rallies together.
2 Hofmeyr’s affidavit as second respondent, in the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Pretoria in the matter between the Democratic Alliance as Applicant, Case No. 19577/2009. His affidavit was dated 31 March, 2015. Implications of discussion between Kasrils and McCarthy, paras 280–8, pp 88–90. See also para 213, p 67. Transcript of all conversations between the two, marked WHX. See also Sithembosi Msomi, ‘Hofmeyr affidavit may rescue Zuma’, Sunday Times, 5 April 2015. By 2014, McCarthy had been with the World Bank for six years, while the Scorpions had been dissolved and replaced by the Hawks, which resided under the police.
3 The Times, 2 April 2015.
4 Nic Rowell, who briefly worked as a researcher under Ngcuka in the NPA, was the son of Anthony Rowell, who was stationed at the British embassy in Pretoria from 1990–4, and later worked for Kroll and subsequently André Pienaar’s G3 agency in London. Rowell Senior interacted with many key ministers in that earlier period, including Jacob Zuma, whom he met several times even after Zuma became the country’s president. He also had participated in training South African intelligence officers in a Kroll programme in the 1990s after his retirement from British government service. I never hid my association with him. I had come to know and like the young Nic Rowell, who visited me at ANC HQ, Shell House, to learn about South African history. He was living with his father in Pretoria and was at school there at the time. He was an extremely bright youngster: Ngcuka employed him from 1999–2003 as a researcher for the NPA.
5 ‘Kasrils told SAPA that Hofmeyr had said nothing he had not explained before. “I knew him professionally, had a few meetings with him at his request in the run up to Polokwanw and after!”’ PoliticsWeb, 31 March 2015, by Emsie Ferreira ‘Hofmeyr lifts lid.’
6 Graeme Hosken, ‘Hofmeyr bombshell a dud’, The Times, 2 April 2015.
7 Letters, Mail and Guardian, 15 May 2009. By August 2015 Hofmeyr was no longer head of the NPA’s once-crack AFU but head of the Legal Affairs Division, well out of the public eye.
Chapter 28: Of Spooks, Mules and Moles
1 ‘Meeting the challenges for the 21st century: The importance of oversight – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards?’, National Assembly, Cape Town, 1 June 2006.
2 The Matthews Commission Report could be accessed on the Mail & Guardian website.
3 Gaye Davis, ‘Kasrils: Info Bill must be withdrawn’, Pretoria News, 20 August 2010. Minister Cwele’s Protection of State Information Bill was passed by parliament in 2011 but President Zuma has not signed it into law.
4 The Protection of Information Act of 1982.
5 Howard Varney, email to the author, 5 July 2017.
6 This caused an uproar during Zuma’s 2015 State of the Nation parliamentary address with protests by MP’s delaying proceedings.
7 City Press, 30 April, 2017. The unfortunate young man, Elvis Ramosebudi, was arrested and charged with attempting to obtain funds quite openly as a hired assassin of Zuma, the Guptas and a variety of ministers he promised to bump off with guns he tried to buy on Twitter – while at the same time soliciting for assassination work from the Guptas.
8 ‘Ronnie Kasrils blasts “idiotic” levels of secrecy’, City Press, 17 August 2014.
9 Gordhan rubbished allegations of ‘secret’ meetings held in London, a bogus intelligence report and the grounds for his dismissal in general. See Daily Maverick, 31 March 2017.
10 ‘Zuma used fake intel to cull Eskom execs’, Sunday Times, 21 May 2017.
11 Daily Maverick, 20 June 2017. ‘SA’s spy boss implicated in massive tender fraud at Prasa’, was the headline in the article about Arthur Fraser. The Huffington Post, 20 June 2017, featured a similar article about Fraser headed ‘Spy boss’ company in dodgy Prasa contract’. PRASA has been regarded as paralysed by systemic corruption, and the former CEO Lucky Montana, one-time active member of the SACP, is under investigation. He used to complain to me about perceived corruption in the SACP under Blade Nzimande and presented himself as a squeaky-clean whistleblower.
12 ‘Smoke and mirrors’, Mail & Guardian, 1–7 May 2009.
13 Ibid. Cosatu received the fax on 6 May 2007, according to Powell.
14 Peddlers are private and anonymous intelligence sources touting information.
Chapter 29: Sidikiwe
1 A popular school teacher who led a protest demonstration for better municipal service delivery in Fiksburg, Free State, in April 2011. He was shot in the chest after being assaulted by police.
2 Greg Marinovich, Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of the Marikana Massacre (Johannesburg, Penguin Random House, 2016). Marinovich’s stark and horrifying conclusions on how the police had tracked and killed the miners first appeared in Daily Maverick in September 2012 under the headline ‘The cold murder fields of Marikana’, www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-30-the-murder-fields-of-marikana-the-cold-murder-fields-of-marikana#.WR1Rk8b-vDc.
3 The terrible event has been brilliantly captured in a prize-winning documentary by Rehad Desai, Miners Shot Down. See www.minersshotdown.co.za.
4 ‘Kasrils unsure how to vote’, Mail & Guardian, 14 March 2014.
5 Business Day, The Star, Citizen and New Age, 16 April 2014 and most of their counterparts in the smaller cities.
6 Lindiwe Sisulu and I have not had an easy relationship, which seems to have had its origins in my appointment in 2004 to take over her beloved intelligence services, where she had been minister from 2001 to 2004, when I succeeded her. She took umbrage at my first budget speech in June 2005 when I mentioned the urgent need to harmonise the expenditure ratios, which showed that since 1994 a worrying disjunction was evident: running costs (which included a growing salary bill) were eating into operational and capital costs. She complained about this to the deputy president, Jacob Zuma, and to the minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad. The latter raised this in cabinet: I denied my remarks were meant personally as they covered former minister Nhlanhla’s tenure as well, and I pointed out that I had recorded my appreciation to my predecessors, by name, for their fine work. In his office, Zuma was bovine-faced in raising the issue with me. ‘Have you read the speech?’ I enquired, knowing full well that he scarcely bothered reading anything. Since he had not, I told him I would provide him with a copy. I did, but I never heard from him again on the issue. However, the extent of Sisulu’s feud with me became evident after Mandela’s death. MK veterans (not the MKMVA of Maphatsoe, I hasten to add) were scheduled to meet at his Houghton home to pay respects to his widow, Graça Machel. The group, including Josiah Jele, Siphiwe Nyanda and a score of mgwenya (1960s MK veterans), were ushered into a reception area where Graça was seated on the floor in the traditional way, with numerous other female mourners. Sisulu is adept at performing the role of usher at such occasions. My wife Amina had accompanied me to the house and overheard Sisulu instructing Mandela’s daughter, the temperamental Makaziwe, to inform Graça to cut me short as I ‘tended to speak far too long’. I had in fact been honoured by the MK group’s prior request that I be their spokesman in conveying our commiserations. As I was speaking to an attentive and clearly grateful Graça, Makaziwe had the effrontery to interrupt my speech by approaching Graça and whispering into her ear. I paused until she had completed her mission. Graça looked up at me, with her sympathetic eyes, motioning me to continue. After I concluded a five-minute address with a sentence or two in her native Portuguese she thanked us in a warm and appreciative way.
7 The Star, 7 May 2014.
8 ‘Barney Pityana on Vote No’, www.defendingpopulardemocracy.blogspot.co.za/2014/05/barney-pitiyana-on-vote-no.html.
Chapter 30: Kebby’s Comeuppance
1 The Citizen, 9 September 2014, and Mail & Guardian, 12 September 2014.
2 Ronnie Kasrils, Armed and Dangerous (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2013), pp. 13–43.
3 ‘Kasrils also wants apology’, New Age, 17 September 2014.
4 His junior advocate was François Grobler, both briefed by Jenny Friedman Associates.
5 I had worked with Mpofu and Winnie Mandela in the undercover days and had become a close friend of his in protesting against Zuma’s corruption and slating the government over the Marikana massacre of striking miners on 12 August 2012. At the Farlam Commission hearings, Mpofu represented the widows and victims of those ghastly shootings.
6 1983: Chief of Brigade, Higher Officers’ Course, Moscow; 1994: Unity Medal by Presidential Warrant (in the creation of SANDF); 1995: 10-, 20- and 30-Years’ Service Medals in MK; 2002: Cuban International Friendship Medal; 2005: Russian Friendship Medal – 60th Anniversary 1945 Victory over Nazi Germany; 2005: Russian Veterans’ Medal for Co-operation in Angola; 2012: Two Platinum Class (iii) Decorations, presented by President Zuma in 2013.
7 There was one case where I had insisted that one of our foreign service representatives be suspended for a year for having brought the SASS into disrepute owing to drunkenness but I subsequently had him reappointed after it was clear that he had reformed.
8 Business Day, 24 August 2016.
9 The Star, 24 August 2016.
10 Ibid.
11 The Star, 24 August 2016.
Chapter 31: Girl in a Green Scarf
1 African News Agency, 4 April 2016.
2 The ANC’s vote was under 54 percent, and they lost power in the metros of Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth), Johannesburg and Tshwane (Pretoria). The DA maintained its Cape Town stronghold with an increased majority.
3 eNCA and Ra’eesa Pather, ‘Four women and the protest that shook the results ceremony’, Mail & Guardian, 6 August 2016.
4 Author of a biography of Zuma.
5 See ‘Robbed of her identity, Khwezi’s humanity can finally be fully acknowledged’, City Press, 16 October 2016. In this piece Makanya revisited and updated his November 2005 report in the Sunday Times and makes reference to ‘a pliable journalist’ who had been given access to Khwezi’s phone number.
6 The Star, 10 October 2016.
7 The Star, 10 August 2016 and Amandla, November 2016.
8 Written while she was in exile and widely circulated following her death. She had performed it publicly while living in the Netherlands as an exile.
Chapter 32: The Corridors to Corruption
1 ‘The Corridors to Corruption’, by ‘Touissant’ (Bernstein’s pen name) The African Communist, No. 124, First Quarter, 1991.
2 Bernstein’s reference to ‘superstructure’ encompasses the institutions of state, governance, law, finance, education, and the mainstream ideas, philosophy and culture dominant in society. These institutions and ideology emerge from the material base or foundation of society, which consists of the means of production (tools, factories, land, raw material, labour), distribution and exchange of goods and wealth produced. The dominant ideology of the ruling class strives to justify the social relations of production between social classes arising out of property relations.
Chapter 33: Faust and Mephistopheles
1 From the Introduction to the 2013 edition of Armed and Dangerous (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2013).
2 I record my indebtedness in particular to Sampie Terreblanche, the retired Stellenbosch professor of economics, and Patrick Bond, activist and academic who was closely involved in the drafting of the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development Programme White Paper, and again in drafting the aborted 1996 National Growth and Development Strategy.
3 Strategy and Tactics of the ANC, adopted at the Morogoro Conference, Tanzania, April 1969.
4 Oliver Tambo, Address to 60th anniversary meeting, SACP, London, 30 July 1981.
Chapter 34: Flight of the Flamingos
1 The scenarios had previously been presented to a score of economists from the ANC, trade unions, academia and business. The product was later adopted by Generon Consulting, a Texas-based firm that offered ‘large-scale organisational renewal’ and claimed to ‘help our clients to change from a controlling management style to a cooperative decision-making management style which often includes re-shaping the organizational culture through adopting a more comprehensive world-view.’
2 See Pieter le Roux, ‘The Mont Fleur scenarios’, Weekly Mail & Guardian, July 1992, and Adam Kahane, ‘Between a ostrich and a flamingo’, Mail & Guardian online, 2 August 2007.
3 Pippa Green, Choice Not Fate: The Life and Times of Trevor Manuel (Johannesburg, Penguin Books, 2008).
4 At the Bank of China in London.
5 MERG Report, Making Democracy Work: A Framework for Macro-economic Policy in South Africa, 1993, Chapter 1.
6 Business Day, editorial comment, ‘Left Bank’, 8 November 1993.
7 R.G. Cofino, ‘A successful approach to participation: The World Bank relationship with South Africa’, July 1995.
Chapter 35: Sleepwalking into the Future
1 F.W. de Klerk, The Last Trek: A New Beginning (London, Pan Books, 1999), p. 344.
2 Ibid., p. 345. De Klerk was explaining his party’s support for Gear in the Government of National Unity.
3 Ibid., p. 345.
4 Chris Liebenberg was CEO of Nedbank, one of South Africa’s ‘big four’ financial institutions, from 1990 to 1994. He was minister of finance from 19 September 1994 to 4 April 1996, in the Government of National Unity.
5 Vishnu Padayachee in an email to the author, 27 May 2017.
6 De Klerk, The Last Trek, p. 343.
7 Jay Naidoo, Change: Organising Tomorrow, Today (Johannesburg, Penguin, 2017).
8 Steyn, South African billionaire founder and shareholder of the UK-based insurance and financial services company BGL Group, was an early wooer of the ANC leadership, opening his lavish, sprawling home in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, to them.
9 Elias Masilela, Number 43 Trelawney Park (Cape Town, David Philip, 2007), p. xviii. The address in the book’s title was the humble home of his exiled parents and the venue had been central to ANC activity for many years. Masilela later went on to work in South Africa’s finance department and as CEO of the strategic Public Investment Corporation.
10 ‘We will nationalise – Mandela’, Weekly Mail & Guardian, 26 January 1990, www.mg.co.za/article/1990-01-26-we-will-nationalise-mandela.
11 I am indebted to a reading of ‘Transitional justice, criminal justice, and exceptionalism in South Africa’ by Howard Varney in Michael Reed and Amanda Lyons (eds.), Contested Transitions: Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Colombia and Comparative Experience (International Center for Transitional Justice, Bogota, and Ministry of Foreign Relations of Norway, 2010).
Chapter 36: A People’s Pact
1 Blade Nzimande, Address to the SACP’s 14th Congress, Boksburg, 11 July 2017.
2 Marianne Thamm, ‘Corrupting the country’s soul, Zupta style’. Daily Maverick, 12 July 2017.
3 Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (The ‘Junius’ Pamphlet) (1915): ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads: either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.’
4 The term ‘food security’ should be understood as the concept of ‘food sovereignty’, being the right to healthy food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define and control their own food and agriculture systems. It is the alternative to the corporate food system. Refer: Peoples’ Food Sovereignty Act No 1 of 2016, of the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign (SAFSC).