Silence of the Lambs — Identity of apartheid state informers buried along with former ‘superspy’ Niël Barnard

Niël Barnard, former head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), died on 13 January, aged 76, taking with him to the great beyond the names of prominent South Africans who once collaborated with the apartheid state.

Barnard, who retired to Gansbaai and battled cancer for some time, was the “backroom” man who had the ear of the last two apartheid presidents, PW Botha and later, FW de Klerk, with regard to a negotiated settlement with the then-banned African National Congress (ANC) and its leaders.

Born in South West Africa (now Namibia), Barnard is guaranteed a place in the annals of South Africa’s democratic history, alongside others who helped shape a non-racial, democratic future.

However, it is worth noting that in 1985, then ANC president Oliver Tambo set up a seven-person constitutional committee including Pallo Jordan, Kader Asmal, Albie Sachs, Jack Simon and Zola Skweyiya, to create the backbone for a future constitution. 

The team drafted 14 versions before producing a document endorsed in 1988 by the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity as the basis of the approach to South Africa.

While Barnard had acted as a bridge and a repository of vital intelligence and information for Botha and his cabinet during “secret” talks with the incarcerated Nelson Mandela in preparation for the negotiations, the process within the ANC had already begun and it was already a few steps ahead.

In “Dear Comrade President”, historian Andre Odendaal’s enlightening tome about the pre-planning within the ANC in exile, he writes that a later feature of the negotiating process was “the way in which the ANC, with its more than four years of focused pre-planning, outmanoeuvred opponents determined to block democracy”. 

Backed into a corner

In the late 1980s the Nationalist government, backed into a corner as a result of years-long sanctions as well as internal and external political pressure coupled with shifting global relations, had no choice but to settle.

Barnard found himself in the eye of the storm, as a new and democratic South Africa was born and turbulently took shape.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 enabled Nationalists to uncouple themselves from the notion of the rooi gevaar or the “communist” bogeyman, deployed with tremendous success to fan fear among the minority white population for 48 years.

“The list” of alleged collaborators, as it has become known, contained, according to Barnard himself in a 27-page affidavit to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997, the names of several individuals “who today occupied prominent leadership positions in South Africa” and who had supplied “security information” to the NIS.

These informers were embedded in politics, administrative positions, public life, the business and media sectors and other spheres, he said. Some had supplied the information knowingly and others unknowingly at times, he admitted.

Mandela’s request

In 1997, the newly elected first president of democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela, called on Barnard to submit the list to the TRC.

“It is expected of all people who once occupied positions of responsibility and command, irrespective of political background, that they shall make a full disclosure to the TRC,” said a statement issued by Mandela's office.

Mandela added that “not only does this have the potential to undermine the confidence of the people, it brings about the possibility of undermining the strides we have made in promoting reconciliation”.

Nelson Mandela speaks during a press conference at the Swedish parliament in Stockholm on 13 March 1990, while on a five-day state visit to the country. (Photo: Per-Anders Pettersson / Getty Images)

PW Botha, former president of South Africa, during the apartheid years. (Photo: Gallo Images / Media 24)