Meanwhile, back at the Zuma security ranch, there was PW Botha’s Stratcom, resurrected

Much ink has been employed over the past few years to describe the construction of a parallel state under the supervision of Jacob Zuma and his supporters.

This development, which appears to have gained pace during the second Zuma term as president, eroded the very foundations of the constitutional state that had been central to the birth of democracy in 1994. In his inaugural speech as President in May 1994, Nelson Mandela said, “never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one over another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world”.

By that, he surely meant that South Africa had now made a decisive break from an awful racist and repressive past.

Sadly, within 20 years, it now appears that, in the construction of the parallel state, the very prototypes of the security structures that had been employed by PW Botha to prop up his corrupt and repressive regime were dusted off and reconfigured to underpin structures that bypassed the very Constitution that had been so carefully designed to ensure that our authoritarian history would never be repeated.

This conclusion is sourced in the recently released report of the High-Level Panel on the State Security Agency under the chair of Dr Sydney Mufamadi which had been set up by President Cyril Ramaphosa. In summary, its main conclusions were the following:

Politicisation

The growing contagion of the civilian intelligence community by the factionalism in the African National Congress progressively worsened from 2009.

Doctrinal shift

From about 2009, there was a marked doctrinal shift in the intelligence community away from the prescripts of the Constitution, the White Paper on Intelligence, and the human security philosophy towards a much narrower, state security orientation.

Amalgamation

The amalgamation of the National Intelligence Agency and South African Secret Service into the State Security Agency (SSA) did not achieve its purported objectives and was contrary to existing policy.

Secrecy

There is a disproportionate application of secrecy in the SSA stifling effective accountability.

Resource abuse

The SSA had become a “cash cow” for many inside and outside the agency.

The effect of these changes to the very nature of the SSA was that the security agencies were unaccountable to the Constitution. Thus, it is unsurprising that the panel found that “there had been instances of serious criminal behaviour which had taken place under the guise of conducting covert work and that this behaviour may have involved theft, forgery and uttering, fraud, corruption, and even bordered on organised crime and transgressions of the Prevention Organised Crime Act”.

Within less than two decades into democracy, spying on non-government organisations as well as on opposing factions within the ruling party, and the generation of fake news to undermine opposition to the rule of Jacob Zuma, became the work of the SSA.

This is exactly what PW Botha’s Stratcom did to opponents of apartheid during the 1980s, which raises the question pertinently: What was the struggle to end apartheid about?

As Mr Mandela said in his speech from the dock at the Rivonia trial and again in his 1994 inaugural speech in 1994, while a key objective was the eradication of racist rule, it was also about the need to ensure that no one would any longer be oppressed by the state and its agencies.

Yet, according to the panel, that is exactly what occurred thanks to SSA activity over the past few years.

In this connection the panel’s finding is devastating:

“Many of the leadership and management of the intelligence services have come from an ANC and liberation struggle background and have seemingly, in some cases, not been able to separate their professional responsibilities from their political inclinations. This became progressively worse during the administration of the former president, with parallel structures being created that directly served the personal and political interests of the president and, in some cases, the relevant ministers. All this was in complete breach of the Constitution, the White Paper, the legislation and other prescripts.”

Already the accusation is levelled that the panel had apartheid spies in its midst — a somewhat ironic accusation in the light of the parallels between the methods of PW Botha’s security apparatus and the SSA.

Whatever the merits of these ad hominem attacks, it is critical that a carefully conducted investigation be implemented forthwith, as was recommended by the panel and if indicated, as a consequence, prosecutions without fear or favour of those who ordered, constructed and implemented the activities documented by the panel.

Only if these steps are undertaken speedily can confidence in the constitutional state be restored.

The short point is this: Whatever the achievements of the judicial system in general and the Constitutional Court in particular, a constitutional democracy has no meaningful future if, back at the security ranch, a more powerful system of government accountable to no law or Constitution is created. DM