The recent leaking of South Africa’s secret documents by Al Jazeera media network has triggered critical questions and debate about the state of intelligence gathering in the country.
The legendary Nelson Mandela had led a successful transition from the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994; South Africa faced the enormous challenge of building the institutions of a new democratic and all inclusive state. The process was mostly transparent, but not at the secret agencies’ headquarters.
Public confidence in the State Security Agency seems to have been eroded and the backlash is on two political personalities who have ruled or stilling ruling the Rainbow Nation.
President Jacob Zuma took over the presidency from Thabo Mbeki in 2008. But there were lots of controversies regarding his takeover. It was alleged that President Zuma used the intelligence service to his advantage.
Author of Rise of the Securocrats, Jane Duncan described the intra-party election inside the ruling African National Congress between Mbeki and Zuma as “a bruising succession battle”, adding that “we saw the abuse of the intelligence services in order to advantage one or the other political faction.”
The leaked cables are not only about South Africa itself but also included are friendly agencies such as Israel’s Mossad, Russia’s FSB and Britain’s MI6. Israel particularly has suffered huge embarrassment from the leak. The Israelis and others are likely not to trust the South African intelligence service anymore. Clearly, there has been breach of trust between them and their South African counterparts. That is the price South Africa will have to pay for acting reckless.
The big question everybody is asking is; how could this happen to an institution which is supposed to be secret? The truth is that some foresaw this happening to the intelligence service when the Mbeki-Zuma rivalry set in the service.
“The State Security Agency has now become a state within a state beyond effective scrutiny and oversight of parliament,” this was said by South Africa’s shadow defence minister-David Maynier sometime ago.
Former Minister of Intelligence- Ronnie Kasrils warned after his resignation that the security services were spiraling out of control and emergency measures needed to be taken to prevent future embarrassment.
“I say, you comrades need to be very, very careful to avoid this country moving towards more and more secrecy and the emergence of the police state, the abuse of power, the misuse of intelligence and security agencies”.
He warned further that the secret service had “become totally immersed in the game of politics and the power politics at play in the country”. He finally ended his warning by pointing a finger at the presidency.
“Under [Zuma] we’ve seen so many changes of personnel, people who once served him loyally, who have been arbitrarily dismissed, who to this day now have tremendous axes to grind in relation to the way they were treated”, he said.
Former spy and Intelligence Coordinator-Barry Gilder also confirmed Kasrils account “the divisions between former President Thabo Mbeki and his successor Jacob Zuma-those rivalries found their way into the intelligence services in the mid-2000s and slowly they have been dividing an already fractured spy network”.
The full story is that the Zuma faction in the intelligence service sees themselves as the bosses. They do not respect the rules of the game. But the losers (Mbeki faction) have not gone away. They are hurt. And the only way they can settle the score is to leak sensitive documents to the press to embarrass the intelligence agency.
Source: www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2015/02/battle-intelligence-south-africa-ssa-spy-cables-guardian-security-150224170928946.html
