2014 Radebe report into ‘rogue unit’ based on discredited witnesses, sheds light on genesis of attack on SARS

On 30 September 2019, Equality Court Judge Roland Sutherland ruled that a 2014 classified report by the late inspector-general of intelligence (IGI), Faith Radebe, should remain part of the record in a hate speech matter involving the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and EFF leaders Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu.

While the EFF’s spinner, Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, was quick to trumpet the ruling by “Judge Southerland” as a “victory” over the EFF’s enemy No 1, Gordhan, the ruling is good for South Africa and for transparency and accountability.

The full report is now publicly available and can be accessed on the EFF website. (Thank you, Fighters)

Gordhan attempted to strike the report from the record because it had nothing to do with the hate speech charges. Why the EFF chose to attach the classified report, and where the party accessed it, is a piece of the puzzle that still has to be put in place.

All in good time.

However, its action does seem to dovetail with the Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s current attempt at nailing Gordhan – she too was in possession, illegally, of Radebe’s report.

Gordhan lodged two charges of hate speech with the Equality Court against Malema and Shivambu after Malema had, while addressing supporters outside the Zondo Commission of Inquiry in November 2018, referred to Gordhan as “a dog of white monopoly capital”. Malema also urged supporters to be “ready for war” against Gordhan.

The classified IGI report, which had been circulated nonetheless in government circles since 2014, with some confident that it offered “proof” that a “rogue unit” operated at SARS, can now be properly scrutinised and tested.

And not a moment too soon.

Because it has been secret and because it has been used behind the scenes as a threat, it is prudent to return to its origin and some of the key players, as well as the ultimate findings that were reached.

This even more so given explosive evidence of gross maladministration and corruption across all levels of government during the Zuma years that have been made public at various commissions of inquiry, as well as in the findings of the High-Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency.

The High-Level Review Panel found that Jacob Zuma, as president of South Africa, had run unconstitutional and unaccountable parallel structures within the intelligence services to serve personal and factional ANC interests.

But back in 2014, when the then-security minister David Mahlobo commissioned the report, Zuma was still president and the attacks on SARS had just begun after the appointment of Tom Moyane as commissioner the same year. It has since emerged that a year before his appointment Moyane had met with Boston-based Bain & Co’s managing director, Vittorio Massone, and had sought his views on the restructuring of SARS.

“After he received the tip-off, Massone immediately invited Moyane to the firm’s local offices in Melrose Arch. Jonas Makwakwa, the SARS official who would later become Moyane’s right-hand man at SARS, joined the discussion about what Bain could and should change in SARS,” wrote Scorpio’s Pauli van Wyk.

Mahlobo, a Zuma ally, commissioned the Radebe report after allegations of misconduct by State Security Agency (SSA) operatives Mandisa Mokwena and Belinda Walters, who were both embedded within SARS, first appeared in the media. Both women later admitted to being SSA operatives.

What is unfortunate however, is that the report's author, Faith Radebe, will not be able to be cross-examined on not only how she conducted her investigation, but also how a report which was meant to probe the “involvement of the SSA Special Operations Unit (SOU) and other branches of the SSA with Ms Walter and other persons in the illicit tobacco industry” morphed into an investigation of SARS itself and a finding that a “rogue unit” existed.

Mahlobo had also asked Radebe to investigate “allegations of a smear campaign by the SOU against top management of the NPA, SAPS and SARS”, the “alleged infiltration by the SSA into the tobacco industry” and “whether the SOU and/or other branches of the SSA had been involved in non-compliant utilisation of human resources, safe houses, source payment, use of intrusive measures and state resources as alleged”.

Notice anything? No mention of SARS, yet.

The Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence is a powerful position with a mandate to monitor “the intelligence and counterintelligence activities of the Intelligence Services which includes the SSA, the Crime Intelligence division of the Police and Defence Intelligence of the Defence Force”.

Considering the large-scale plunder of Crime Intelligence (CI) Secret Account (currently being unpacked in detail at the Zondo Commission) and the abuse of the SSA, the Office of the Inspector-General has been out to lunch for several years – the Zuma years to be precise.

The terms of reference of Radebe’s report, as she set out herself, were related to “allegations against SSA and the activities of the SSA in the illicit tobacco industry”.

Radebe, who died in April 2018, was a close Zuma ally and a former employee of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the SSA. Her links to the NIA and the SSA led to charges in 2010 after her appointment by the then-acting president, Kgalema Motlanthe, that she would not be able to act in a suitably independent manner in holding former comrades to account.

Radebe was a special legal adviser on conditions of service for the Intelligence Service Council and a senior manager in the Office of the Coordinator for Intelligence between 2000 and 2003. She also held positions in the National Intelligence Agency between 1998 and 1999. She was previously South Africa’s High Commissioner to the Caribbean community.

Chris Barron, in an obituary published in the Sunday Times after Radebe’s death at 66 from stomach cancer, noted that, “A little more than a year after being appointed, she referred the results of a Hawks investigation detailing shocking abuses in the police crime intelligence unit, headed by close Jacob Zuma ally Richard Mdluli, to the NPA for criminal prosecution. She backtracked after reportedly receiving a call from Zuma, then president, and having a meeting with then police minister Nathi Mthethwa.”

In March 2012, an investigation by amaBhungane found evidence of Zuma’s call to Radebe as well as her meeting with Mthethwa and the then-acting national commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

But back to Radebe’s report, where she lists on page two, key witnesses she approached and interviewed during her investigation.

The list makes for interesting reading, in retrospect.

Apart from interviewing SARS members who were all later to be axed, including acting deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay, SARS group executive Johan van Loggerenberg, SARS head of enforcement Gene Ravele and SARS group executive for strategic planning Pete Richer, Radebe also interviewed a list of SSA operatives, many of whom have since been publicly discredited in testimony to various commissions of inquiry.

In June 2018, Ravele testified at the Nugent Commission of Inquiry into Tax Affairs that SARS’ High Risk Investigations Unit had “hurt” people who were politically connected and that is why it was targeted.

Ravele had testified to the commission that he had been “pushed out” of SARS through a series of investigations as well as a criminal case that had been lodged against him and his wife, also a SARS employee. The charges were formally dropped in September 2017 when the NPA found there had been no evidence to support the charges.

Topping Radebe’s list of SSA interviews back in 2014 was SSA Special Operations Unit head, Thulani Dlomo, nicknamed “Zuma’s private spy”, later named as a key player in the High Level Review Panel report into the State Security Agency.

Dlomo was recalled from his post as ambassador to Japan in January 2019 after the release of the panel’s report and has gone “AWOL” ever since.

The report found that Dlomo’s SOU had been a “law unto itself and directly served the political interests of the executive”.

The report also found that the SOU was a “parallel intelligence structure serving a faction of the ruling party and, in particular, the personal political interests of the sitting president of the party and the country. This is in direct breach of the Constitution, the White Paper, the relevant legislation and plain good government intelligence functioning.”

The panel recommended that, “The SOU and related matters should form the basis for serious consequences and for those involved in illegal activity, including, where appropriate, disciplinary and/or criminal prosecution.”

Witness No 3 on Radebe’s list was SSA spy Belinda Walter, who lobbed the first grenade into SARS. It was a complaint by Walter against Van Loggerenberg that set the “rogue unit” ball rolling in 2014.

It was also this complaint that led to the establishment of an investigation, the first of many, and which culminated in the KPMG report, which was later withdrawn in its entirety.

Radebe noted that Walter “was a walk-in agent in 2010 in the office of the State Security Agency Director: Domestic Branch Mr [Gibson] Njenje with information on the smuggling of cigarettes into South Africa”.

Walter also happened to work as a spy for British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA), acted as an attorney for competitors Carnilinx and had been instrumental in setting up the original iteration of the Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita).

This had been done to spy on independent tobacco producers who were entering the market in competition to the established Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa (Tisa) group. Tisa, established in 1991, includes BATSA, Alliance One International, JTI South Africa, Philip Morris South Africa and Imperial Tobacco Southern Africa.