Intelligence affairs, 2006–2017
SPYING OR, MORE POLITELY, the gathering of intelligence is said to be the world’s second oldest profession. The bible refers to Moses sending his spies into the land of Canaan to gather information about the people living there. All leaders and countries require to know what is happening in the world, what opportunities and threats exist, for security is essential. Given the enormous powers and resources that intelligence agencies often possess and the secretive nature of their work, much can go awry. This is why regulations governing their activities are so necessary. Unless security and intelligence practices in government and the state are open to sensible transparency, operating in a mature and professional manner, they become more of a threat to society than an asset.
Already in 2006, arising out of the Masetlha affair I titled my parliamentary budget speech ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians’, in which I dealt with the need to strengthen oversight and keep the intelligence services to their professional mandate.1 My speech was handed out with a small gift – a fridge magnet with the wording of my five rules of intelligence. One such magnet remains on my refrigerator to this day.
In the same year I also appointed a ministerial review commission on intelligence, the Matthews Commission, whose report, as I have mentioned, was tabled at the last Mbeki cabinet in 2008. Its main finding was that the institutional culture of intelligence agencies in South Africa was not sufficiently respectful of the rule of law or of lawful political opposition to the government. Instead, the intelligence services had been politicised and thus ‘drawn into the realm of party politics, requiring them to monitor and investigate legal political activity and, as a result, undermining political rights that were entrenched in the constitution’. The commission also found that accountability to the public was weak, a ‘consequence of excessive secrecy, which is inconsistent with the constitutional tenet that all spheres of government must be transparent and accountable’. More specifically, it found that the National Communications Centre (NCC) ‘appears to be engaged in signals monitoring that is unlawful and unconstitutional’ and that ‘some senior officials believe that it is legitimate to break the rules when dealing with serious security threats’. The conclusion of the report crucially argued that ‘the right of access to information lies at the heart of democratic accountability and an open and free society. Secrecy should therefore be regarded as an exception … the intelligence organisations have not shed sufficiently the apartheid-era security obsession with secrecy.’2
After I resigned as minister, Zuma appointed as my successor a close confidant of his at the time, Dr Siyabonga Cwele. Gibson Njenje was re-employed as head of NIA and Moe Shaik was appointed head of SASS, a step I applauded in the media as I had always respected his abilities. Jeff Maqetuka, who I regarded as a person of intergrity, was made director-general overseeing both services in a new structure called the State Security Agency. The new appointments did not last long and ended with the resignation of all three. Shortly before this came the sensational discovery that Cwele’s wife has run a drug mule to Latin America. She was found guilty and received a fifteen-year sentence. Dr Cwele claimed he was ignorant of his wife’s racketeering.
In time Zuma transferred Cwele to head the post and telecommunications ministry, but before then Cwele introduced a Protection of State Information Bill in parliament, which amounted in my view to the retention of apartheid-era security arrangements. After resigning from government I became an active supporter of the Right2Know campaign, fighting against government secrecy and corruption. I consequently took issue with the new Secrecy Bill, particularly as Cwele alleged in parliament that opponents of the bill were ‘agents of foreign spies’.3 As I stated at the time: ‘Consider the impact of such inflammatory statements on members of the intelligence services … [who] will be encouraged to adopt a mindset already noted for excessive secrecy, exaggerated fears and paranoia. And they are the very officials whom the Bill entrusts with all the tasks [of implementation] once it becomes law.’
The irony was that I had introduced a first draft of a bill, relating to the classification of information, when I was minister. At that time new legislation was required because the government still operated under a 1982 apartheid law with a regressive classification of information system and heavy penalties for anyone revealing such information.4 I had an impressive team of human rights lawyers help produce my new draft. When journalists suggested the addition of a public interest clause, giving protection to whistleblowers revealing classified information pointing to corruption who otherwise might be prosecuted under the law, we were ready to oblige. However, by that stage my term as minister came to an end, and the draft was discarded by the incoming minister, Cwele, and replaced with his much tougher version. The public interest clause did not survive the parliamentary process. As Howard Varney, the lawyer who led the drafting team, has said to me: ‘I don’t know when it was removed or perhaps, following your departure, the new ministry reverted to an earlier version.’ Varney also pointed out that the Cwele Bill ‘denuded the former [draft] of its main safeguards’.5 Cwele’s Protection of State Information Bill was eventually passed by parliament in 2011 but by mid-2017 was still to be signed into law by President Zuma for undisclosed reasons.
After Cwele’s departure in 2009, Zuma replaced him with a man with virtually no intelligence background whatsoever as minister of state security. This was David Mahlobo, who had worked for the premier of Mpumalanga, David Mabuza, said to be another Zuma acolyte. Mahlobo’s behaviour was soon publicly ridiculed.
He startled the country with his antics, such as ordering the blocking of parliament’s media signals in anticipation of the pandemonium that would be created by Economic Freedom Front (EFF) protests during Zuma’s 2015 State of the Nation parliamentary address;6 his allegations about the counter-revolutionary activities of foreign agencies and their internal agents; and his ridiculous appearances with walkie-talkie apparatus in hand on public platforms, presumably directing his spooks. Where else could the world see an inexperienced interpreter for the deaf, without a security clearance, officially provided for President Obama at the Mandela memorial event; or a founder of the so-called Anti-State Capture Death Squad Alliance arraigned with much fanfare in a court of law in early 2017 instead of being placed under observation in a mental institution?7 Who other than Monty Python could have invented a script as side-splittingly insane? However we dare not be dismissive. These people have enormous power and are not shy to use it.
When Mahlobo refused to answer two parliamentary questions because the information was supposedly classified, I blasted the ‘idiotic levels of secrecy’.8 The one question enquired how much his department had spent on flowers for the ministry since 2009; the other was whether he and his colleagues had attended the World Cup in Brazil. ‘That secrecy was the world of Big Brother,’ I declared: ‘For heaven’s sake, we are living in the 21st century. It is terribly wrong … to reply to questions in this way and it is not the case that everything to do with safety and security should be confidential.’
This kind of behaviour fitted in well with the manipulative use of intelligence by his president. When Zuma dramatically dismissed the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, in March 2017, he excitedly waved an intelligence report in the air and claimed they had been abroad with the intention of conspiring with foreign agents to overthrow him. Gordhan, who had seen the report, described it as a crude, poorly written, semi-literate smear.9 Zuma has withheld the report from public scrutiny and will not reveal its origin. He has evaded questions about whether the report was provided by his intelligence service or simply came from an anonymous source. Without appearing to have learnt anything from the litany of bogus reports circulating through the years, he accepted a document that appeared to make Masetlha’s phoney emails by comparison a sophisticated masterpiece of deception. His use of unsubstantiated intelligence has become synonymous with his rule and has seemingly been passed on to his offspring. If reports published by the Sunday Times are true, a ‘devious’ intelligence report compiled by his son Duduzane enabled him to have removed four top Eskom executives. If, again, the Sunday Times report is true, then, according to the newspaper, this paved the way for the appointment of his and the Guptas’ man, Brian Molefe, as CEO of Eskom in 2015.10 Given the history of Zuma’s accession to power and his rule since then, I don’t believe his behaviour to get his way by fair means or foul should be surprising. His clumsy but dangerous methods bring into doubt whether he was ever a skilled intelligence operative during the struggle years.
Zuma’s penchant for directly controlling the police, and particularly security and intelligence, has proved disastrous for the services. The appointment of men like David Mahlobo was in keeping with his need to put in place pliable loyalists whom he could dominate and instruct. They were unlike the more senior officials he once installed, such as Moe Shaik, Gibson Njenje and Jeff Maqetuka, with the experience to question his decisions. At the same time, cabinet reshuffles, most notoriously in the mining, energy, communications and finance sector, and executive appointments in state-operated entities such as at Eskom, the SABC and South African Airways, ensured that almost all strategic posts came under his thumb.
Rumours gained ground that Zuma directly ran internal intelligence units, particularly of the political and surveillance type, which reported directly to him. I had often warned the SACP to watch out for Zuma’s inclinations regarding the gathering and control of information, and the drift towards a security state.
Under Zuma, the intelligence services were transformed into a restructured security establishment, with Mahlobo designated minister of state security. Then followed the surprising appointment in September 2016 of Arthur Fraser as a new ‘super’ director general of the restructered State Security Agency incorporating NIA, SASS etc. I had followed Fraser’s career with interest after my departure, particularly the controversies aired in the media about his appointment.
For Fraser it took a long time to come in from the cold. He had been under investigation within the department for the alleged improper utilisation of funds, but the case apparently disappeared. Then his surprising recall took place and his appointment at the highest possible level. Nevertheless, a cloud still hangs over him. A security company partly owned by Arthur Fraser stands accused of flouting tender processes and submitting a false tax certificate in order to score a R90 million contract from PRASA (the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa), a National Treasury investigation has found. Resurgent Risk Managers, a company co-founded by Fraser and the former NIA chief Manala Manzini, may also have bribed their way into the contract, investigators concluded.11 One wonders whether there is anyone in South Africa’s security and intelligence community immune to the lure of power and wealth. Not, it seems, when the cancer is allowed to spread unchecked by leaders who appear to reward those ready to sell their souls. Corruption becomes endemic infecting once decent people who succumb as resistance is depleted as with any disease. That is why it is so difficult to eradicate.
One of the most interesting examples of the intelligence sagas that characterised Zuma’s ascent to power was the so-called Browse Mole report. This strange-sounding animal appeared to lie low during much of the Masetlha email and Spy Tapes sagas. But when the intelligence report came to light in 2007, it was, to mix metaphors, akin to the proverbial cat tossed among the pigeons, for it caused terror among Zuma’s inner circle who campaigned for him in the period leading to the Polokwane conference. Huge amounts of funds were said to have been acquired for Zuma’s stunning comeback, for campaigning and for ever-rising legal fees, and there were suggestions that his most ardent supporters, top politicians in the country, were illegally bringing in the money from Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan ‘Brother Leader’, as well as from the Angolan president, Eduardo dos Santos, both of whom admired Zuma and were hostile to Mbeki.
The name Browse Mole was coined by a journalist-turned-investigator for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Ivor Powell. An all-out campaign to smear and intimidate him was mounted by the Zuma circle and included investigations by the security sector and the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, which sadly, im my experience, had leant itself to Zuma’s cause.
In an article published in the Mail & Guardian, the harassed Powell explained how he came up with the name Browse Mole.12 He said it was a name for a report he was compiling, in the main from open sources. The phrase related to already published and available material from the media, research papers, speeches and so on. ‘Mole,’ Powell explained, ‘is an arbitrary codename – the result, no doubt, of my reading of too many spy novels in my impressionable youth.’ ‘Browse,’ he continued, ‘is an open source exercise, a collection of information already in the public domain – or at most semi-public domain, as the rules of the game allow one to talk to sources on a confidential and voluntary basis. You, the browser, then sift it all and try to make sense of it. At the end of the day, you make recommendations in respect of follow-ups by empowered investigators.’ Powell explained that ‘Mole was an internal briefing and nothing more’. But Powell’s role was sensationalised and this clearly caused him much hurt and embarrassment. In the Mail & Guardian he explained: ‘I’ve kept faith with my former bosses in the NPA and what I hope was a dignified silence in the face of misrepresentations for almost exactly two years now, since 7 May 2007.’
I believe the author was uninvolved in the sensational additions or possibly manipulations to the report, which, as I have remarked, certainly set the cat among the pigeons. And I believe there were a few curious cats involved and possibly quite a few stool pigeons in a flock of doubtful reliability. Those strange creatures were on both sides of the square-off.
What made the Browse Mole so sensational and dangerous stemmed from reports ‘filtering through in the media’, as Ivor Powell noted in his Mail & Guardian article, ‘that [Jacob] Zuma received money from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to aid him in his struggle against Mbeki’. How those funds were syphoned into the country was a matter of conjecture, which made Browse Mole a feared document.
Up to May 2007, Browse Mole appeared to have been lying low, apparently hibernating in its hole, but it suddenly made a startling appearance when a copy was faxed anonymously, or so was the claim, to the Cosatu general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi.13 Vavi was particularly disturbed by the contents of the report, which associated him and the SACP’s Blade Nzimande, among others, with activities to assist the Zuma campaign achieve its goals. What must have particularly worried them, so I learnt from Vavi himself, who later broke ranks with Zuma and Nzimande, was that the report raised queries about how the Zuma campaign was funded by sources at home and abroad. Rumours abounded about huge sums changing hands to ‘buy’ the votes of delegates to the forthcoming Polokwane conference of the ANC. This raised eyebrows, given the allegations being raised in the media that not only Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi but also Angola’s President Dos Santos were seeking to fund Zuma’s ambitions. The upshot was that Vavi wrote to President Mbeki, and to me, copying the report to us both, and demanding that the police and NIA investigate what he regarded as an attempt to frame him. Blade Nzimande likewise anxiously reacted by requesting parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence to investigate as well. They were crying foul and protesting loudly, too loudly in my view.
President Mbeki set up a task team to investigate the origins of the document and the motivation behind the leak. The parliamentary committee received that report and carried out its own inquiries. Its findings were conveniently published shortly before the May 2009 general elections, which saw Jacob Zuma becoming the country’s new president.
The committee found the Browse Mole document ‘extremely inciteful [sic] and provocative’, containing unsubstantiated statements about prominent political figures. It also noted that, according to the task team’s investigation, ‘the leaked document originated from Mr Ivor Powell, and thereafter found its way to the public through (so-called) peddlers14 and the media’.
Powell strenuously denied that allegation, stating: ‘Curiously, neither the [task] team nor the [parliamentary] committee sought to speak to me before reaching their conclusions.’ He made repeated attempts to contact the committee’s chairman, Siyabonga Cwele at the time, as he (Powell) was willing ‘to assist with any queries … To no avail. Nobody seemed to give a tinker’s for what I had to say.’
That was really strange given the near hysteria with which the Browse Mole document was attacked, and the anger that mounted against ‘peddlers’, allegedly sowing confusion with contentious information for sale. One would have expected that Powell’s eagerness to be interviewed would have been welcomed. But inexplicably not. After all the fuss and noise, once the document’s allegations were neutralised, no further interest followed from those who supported Zuma’s campaign.
I have no doubt that had the funding allegations been adequately investigated, well-known political figures might very well have landed in prison. I do not think any of us in the once-proud liberation movement would have been happy to see that. But then again the only way to put an end to corruption is to deal firmly and openly with those involved without fear or favour. Like so much spy sensationalism in South Africa, it appears that once a story has served its purpose, it is swiftly forgotten by those who originally cried foul.