Pretoria and abroad, 2004
INTELLIGENCE WAS A DIFFICULT PORTFOLIO although, given its perceived power, it was much sought after. Some may have thought that Mbeki had handed me a poisoned chalice, for the office had huge problems. The loyalty of the ANC old guard in the sector was geared to the Zuma group, which had faithfully served him in exile and on returning home. By mid-2004 if not far sooner, Mbeki, I believe, had become increasingly wary of his deputy. When I transferred from defence into my first full ministerial position, water affairs and forestry, I thought of it as passing from fire to water. But moving to my new post in intelligence seemed akin to jumping into a sizzling frying pan.
The first six months of my tenure went quietly enough. I was briefed by the three main structures that I would oversee as their executive head. These were the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), responsible for domestic security issues; the South African Secret Service (SASS), whose remit was foreign intelligence gathering; and the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee (NICOC). The last-mentioned was responsible for assessing the intelligence reports submitted not only by NIA and SASS, but also by both police and military intelligence, and preparing a final document for cabinet. In practice these structures jealously hung onto their best intelligence material and only submitted watered-down versions to NICOC. Their heads were inclined to make a beeline for the president, whom they treated with their most impressive information, for his ear only. A serious problem was the politicisation of ANC officers in the public service and growing factionalism within the organisation. The politicisation issue had been understandable enough when after 1994 it was a question of amalgamating former regime personnel with those from the liberation movement. After a decade, however, government and state should have moved beyond that phase, and a stable environment should have been created. But the struggle for ascendancy within the ANC meant otherwise.
Other structures I was responsible for were the top-secret Communications Interception Office (CIO), which required judicial authority for tapping phone lines, and an Intelligence Academy. When I first visited the academy I asked a class of new recruits how they were finding the training. An enthusiastic youngster replied that he loved the world of James Bond. That set me off lecturing them about the role of the spies (amakhangela or iintlola)1 deployed by the indigenous armies of our country in the wars of resistance to colonialism, as sources of inspiration. I commissioned a sculptor to produce a fine figure of one such warrior, which we erected at the services headquarters next to one of the Boer fietsryers of the Anglo-Boer War,2 which had stood there for years.
I had my time cut out meeting the various heads of subdivisions and touring the country to acquaint myself with NIA structures in the nine provinces. The extent to which problems abounded was brought home to me when the liaison officer assigned to accompany me around the provinces went AWOL on the third day. An excuse that he was ill was presented to me, but I soon ascertained for myself that his absence was owing to an alcoholic binge. He was a highly intelligent operative known to me in the dangerous Swaziland days, who was quite probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder which had never been diagnosed. A combination of factionalism within the services and the ANC, rivalry for positions, and difficulty in coping with responsibilities, including family stress, in a transforming environment was the likely explanation for the mess he, and many others, found themselves in.
All the same I began to form the opinion that most of the former ANC operatives were relying on an outer show of competence that hid inner deficiencies and fear of failure. This was understandable, for most of our people had lacked work and life experience – experience that could not be made up through a six-month training course in a socialist country – and they had limited technical and managerial skills. As a result they tended to apply what they had learnt in training in a mechanical and dogmatic manner. They were at a decided disadvantage when compared to the apartheid-era spooks, who, whatever their deficiencies, were highly skilled and efficient managers. ANC people tended to use their political knowledge as a compensatory weapon, which meant they would often talk until the cows came home to impress the gullible. Their formal training abroad was very good but they unfortunately picked up an exaggerated suspicion bordering on paranoia from their instructors in the Soviet Union and East Germany. While the communists in those countries had ample reason to be vigilant about Western plots against them, and we had an extremely ruthless adversary ourselves, it was one thing to be on the lookout for enemy infiltration and quite another thing to be sensible and balanced, which required a maturity not learnt overnight. I make a critical observation of socialist countries, but there are notorious cases of ultra-paranoid Western spy masters in the atmosphere of the Cold War and the current war on terrorism.
President Mbeki complained about the poor quality of the intelligence reports. He invariably knew far more of what was going on in Africa than those who were meant to be providing him with useful information, given his contact with heads of state and other strategic links from exile. I found the country’s intelligence services in a poor state. The officers were of questionable ability and had politically compromised allegiances. Crying wolf had become for them a virtual raison d’être, justifying their existence.
I reported to Mbeki that in my view our security and intelligence agencies suffered from ‘immaturity’, which militated against professional objectivity. I used the word not in the sense of belittling their status but rather owing to their lack of life experience and sophistication, which led to their jumping to conclusions, ignoring the many shades of grey.
Back in the old days there had been a case of undue suspicion cast on Jane Bergerol, née Wilford, who came from an upper-class English background. She was a fearless journalist who covered the Angolan conflict from inside that country in 1975 and became a loyal supporter of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government then establishing itself in Luanda. When the ANC was accommodated there after liberation, she strongly supported us and was well received, so much so that when Oliver Tambo visited Angola he would choose her as his interpreter. There was some jealousy over this, from both MPLA and ANC security organs, who believed they should mutually provide such a service, and consequently resentment of Jane grew behind the scenes. Tambo was none the wiser. It was when our security people discovered that Jane’s father was the British ambassador in Japan that things began to go awry. To them, that meant she must be spying for the United Kingdom. It took some effort to get them to understand that it was not uncommon for upper-class English people to be genuinely anti-apartheid, irrespective of their parents’ position.
To my dismay I discovered that in all the years such naïve and primitive reasoning persisted in the services. Anyone of Western association critical of the ANC leadership was damned as a ‘foreign agent’ serving a ‘counter-revolutionary’ agenda. Such paranoia later came to suit Jacob Zuma’s conspiracy theories to the letter. Those appointed to sensitive security positions stridently sang that same tune.
My wariness for many of the old Imbokodo (‘grinding stone’) of the ANC’s external security department stemmed from the days of exile, when I was head of military intelligence. Suspicion was ingrained in them from their training although I must point out that it was not from the East Germans or the Russians that some in Imbokodo derived their proclivity for brutality – paranoia about imperialist plots, yes; but use of force, no. Those agencies stressed the need to use the mind in interrogation. Force would only encourage the person being questioned to admit to anything you wanted to hear, which was of absolutely no value.
On a visit to Germany in 2005 I was shown around the Stasi complex in former East Berlin by my hosts. When I asked about the Stasi’s measures of interrogation, those former West German officials readily informed me that their hated adversaries did not use torture. I was told that mental pressure, which could become a form of torture, was what the East Germans had relied on. This could involve suggestions that if you did not cooperate your and your children’s career opportunities would be unfulfilled. Not very pleasant of course, but not a physical beating in such cases.
ANC security was uneasy, on pins and needles, with MK leadership. We of MK looked after our own personal security; cherished our own secrets; did not care for prying eyes; sought to protect our operatives – they were the ones who did the risky work – and did not gladly suffer fools who knew little of combat work. We were consequently wary of Imbokodo’s suspicions about MK combatants and would withhold judgement until allegations could be verified. MK rank-and-file soldiers resented them for never having been on combat missions and for the undue attention they often posed to their activities.
Travel abroad was a normal part of the job as minister of intelligence services and was necessary to acquaint myself with the work of SASS, our foreign intelligence service. Establishing relationships with international intelligence agencies was as essential to the job as the work of the country’s foreign relations department. In a sense, obtaining sensitive information globally is a strategic reinforcement of any country’s diplomatic relationships and understanding of the international arena. Consequently I had to meet foreign secret service agencies with notorious records. Just as I had to accustom myself to interacting with them, so they had an interest in assessing me. While there might be immense political differences, there were also areas of common interest such as knowledge pertaining to security threats, transnational crime, weapons of mass destruction, and certainly the growing threat of international terrorism. The last problem gave me a chance to engage on the skewed way that Western agencies perceived the Muslim religion and to raise the warning that growing Islamophobia only played into the hands of the fanatics. In a parliamentary address I argued that terrorism could only be dealt with by going beyond its manifestations to understanding and paying attention to its root causes. I expressed concern that the ‘global war on terror had opened a Pandora’s box which veered towards a dangerous phobia about Islam, one of the world’s most venerated and respected religions’.3
On a trip to Malaysia I settled down to receive a security briefing from the country’s various heads of department. It was a genial atmosphere, as the occasions inevitably were, with quite a degree of banter. The chief of police intelligence, after introducing his colleagues, pointed to one of many portraits of previous chiefs lining the conference room. ‘Minister, you may be interested to know,’ he said, pointing to a portrait above me, ‘that man was assassinated by the communists in 1966.’ After laughter, he added, ‘at that very door you came in through.’ More laughter. Everyone watched for my reaction. ‘Well, I trust you’re not going to make me pay for the crime,’ I replied, and all laughed yet again.
When I visited the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), at its Langley headquarters outside Washington DC, I was besieged by a score of senior officials asking me to sign copies of my memoir, Armed and Dangerous. It happened to be a 2004 edition with a photograph on the back cover of me presenting Fidel Castro with a copy. I had no illusions about the CIA, MI6 or any of the agencies, and found it unsettling to think that the genial and sophisticated people I met were guilty of brutal human rights abuses.
From the Malaysian meeting I took advantage of being in the region to take a short private holiday with Eleanor at the offshore island of Langkawi at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca. One morning relaxing around the hotel pool I got into a discussion with a couple of English tourists. We retreated into the poolside bar to down the local Tiger lager and debate football. Eleanor came to inform me that all the water in the bay had rushed out and that people were picking up marooned fish. I told her I would join her later. Half an hour of football chat is no time at all. Eleanor rushed in a second time to report that an enormous wave had filled the bay to capacity. No damage had been caused. It was only some hours later that we learnt of the tsunami that had struck the region that Boxing Day in 2004. Langkawi was sheltered by Banda Aceh, directly to its west, and our resort had the added protection of a steeply rising beach and mangrove swamps although twenty fishermen were drowned on the other side of the island. However, we had almost booked into a Thai resort where almost everyone was swept out to sea. We had changed bookings on a whim at the last minute. The head of SASS, Tim Dennis, spent hours on the phone from South Africa trying to check whether we were safe and, until we were in touch, assumed the worst. Who would have thought that before long the word ‘tsunami’ would become part of South Africa’s political lexicon to highlight the threat to a sitting president’s position?