Intelligence? What intelligence?

ALMOST 100 Libyan citizens, illegally in South Africa and probably members of a Libyan anti-government militia, were trained militarily outside White River for four months before a police raid this week.

Three Mexican citizens have long been running a factory near Groblersdal where drugs are manufactured for international distribution. They were just caught by the police and drugs worth
R2 billion were confiscated.

A Russian citizen and a South African were arrested in Stilbaai last week and drugs worth R252 million were confiscated.

In all three cases, the police acted on tips from members of the public.

There have been more assassinations of corruption hunters and whistleblowers in the past three years than in the last three decades.

About R300 million in ransoms was paid to kidnappers in the past year. More than 4,300 kidnappings were reported to the police last year, but the true number is probably much higher.

The construction industry, especially in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, says the construction mafias that extort, threaten and sabotage them cost the industry billions of rand and many jobs annually.

South Africans surely now have the right to ask: where the hell are Crime Intelligence and the State Security Agency?

On February 24 last year, the international Financial Task Force placed South Africa on its grey list as a country that needs more intense monitoring.

The DA spokesperson on state security, Dianne Kohler Barnard, says a major reason for this is the intelligence services' failure to act decisively against crimes such as money laundering, state capture, the financing of terrorist groups and corruption.

A Western diplomat I spoke to yesterday (he doesn't even want his country to be named because it would create the suspicion, he says, that there are intelligence people in his embassy) says European, American and British intelligence services know more about crime syndicates and the financing of terrorism in South Africa than the country's own intelligence services.

He is concerned that the intelligence services lack the capacity or political will to identify and neutralise the interference of states such as Iran and Russia in South African affairs.

A former intelligence official who worked for the state between 1999 and 2014 tells me in an interview that the intelligence services are still an “incredible shitshow" after the abuses of the Zuma era and “the joke of the international intelligence community". He believes there is very little preparedness for cyberattacks on the South African state.

The intelligence services' biggest recent failure was not knowing anything in advance about the widespread, orchestrated anarchy and looting of July 2021 in KZN and parts of Gauteng.

The diplomat I spoke to says there is “concern" in the West that no action has been taken against the main architects of the unrest and that the intelligence services are not competent to prevent such events in the future. There is suspicion that the same people who planned the 2021 anarchy are now part of the senior leadership of Jacob Zuma's MK Party.

The chairperson of the panel that investigated these events, Prof Sandy Africa, has now warned that a repeat is entirely possible. Read the article here.

She describes her panel's findings as follows: “The picture pieced together by an expert panel appointed by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa to probe the riots was of a build-up, over several months, of a deliberate and targeted campaign that set the stage for what was to come. This included violent rhetoric, social media mobilisation, and threats aimed at intimidating the courts and law enforcement agencies.

“There were other incendiary acts that fitted into a generalised pattern of public disorder. They included the burning of trucks, blockades of highways and sabotage of infrastructure. 

“These multi-layered currents fed off and reinforced each other. They sometimes ran parallel to each other. The jailing of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court was only a trigger.

“The notion of an insurrection suggests that there were key politically motivated actors who exploited weaknesses in the state’s capacity to drive a general campaign of violence. The violence undermined the legitimacy of state institutions and left the nation psychologically traumatised.

“It left a lingering sense that untouchable people could act with impunity. This perception has been reinforced by the slow trickle of prosecutions, and unconvincing promises by the state to uncover the presumed masterminds.

“A troubling question is whether a recurrence of the devastating events of July 2021 is possible. In my view, it is possible if there is no meaningful change.

“The objective conditions which made the riots possible remain in place. These include the periodic disruptions and blockades on national roads, calls for national shutdowns, and deliberate damage to infrastructure.

“Social media continues to be used to stoke fears and spread rumours of unrest. Moreover, the governing African National Congress (ANC) is wracked by internal rivalry. It is failing to provide much-needed leadership."

The Crime Intelligence police officer who was in charge in KZN between 2018 and December 2022, and who is thus responsible for the lack of intelligence about the 2021 anarchy, Lt-Gen Dumisani Khumalo, was appointed as the national head of Crime Intelligence 18 months after the riots. Say no more.

The SSA explains its role as follows: “To collect, analyse and disseminate critical intelligence to organs of state on threats and opportunities to advance South Africa's national security interests in a changing global environment." The national strategic intelligence law says the SSA exists “to identify any threat or potential threat to the security of the Republic or its people".

After the corruption and abuse of the SSA under Zuma, a high-level panel was appointed to investigate the agency. It found, among other things, that it was used to protect Zuma and destabilise opposition parties; that it established a fake union to promote Zuma's interests; that it infiltrated civil society organisations to neutralise threats to Zuma's rule; and that it tried to disrupt Ramaphosa's campaign to be elected president of the ANC. Read the report here.

My intelligence source says such abuses will not easily occur in the current SSA culture, but that the capacity and skills of the intelligence services are still “extremely poor".

“The Israelis can pinpoint a Hamas leader's room during his visit to Tehran or the house of a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon and kill them. The Americans can lure two of the most powerful Mexican cartel leaders to America and arrest them, as happened last week. Our guys don't even know there have been 100 Libyan militia members sitting openly on a farm in Mpumalanga for months."

The DA's Kohler Barnard says there is definitely an improvement in the SSA after Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, as minister in the presidency, took control of the agency, but she believes she has too many other responsibilities to do it properly.

Kohler Barnard says some of the SSA and Crime Intelligence technology and equipment “belong in the Middle Ages."

“Their very job is to deal with terrorism, sabotage, subversion, espionage and organised crime, so we really have no other option but to ensure that they succeed."

Ntshaveni said two weeks ago in her budget debate in parliament that the SSA should expand relations with other intelligence services “in exchanging information and intelligence that address mutual security interests, particularly those that threaten the well-being of citizens, the region, the continent of Africa, and the rest of the world."

Kohler Barnard: “We must get on top of fighting terrorism, the transnational kidnapping and construction mafia syndicates, our cyber security and large-scale corruption. Until our intelligence agencies turn a razor focus on these threats, we will stay as grey as a winter in Cape Town."

♦ VWB ♦

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