How South Africa's intelligence agencies were decapitated before the 2024 elections
(Part 1 of 2)
Politics these days is a whirlwind of information and intrigue, whether locally or internationally. It is easy to lose sight of crucial issues unless you remain focused and ignore the trivial distractions and ultimately shallow controversies that the public are encouraged to pay attention to. One such crucial issue which has largely been ignored is what has been happening with South Africa’s intelligence agencies.
This is not merely a matter of historical interest with the elections over but is also, I will suggest, very important for coalition decisions being taken as I write this article. One reason is that in 2022 the intelligence agencies were moved into the Presidency by Cyril Ramaphosa after he became president, so those agencies are not overseen by a dedicated minister but rather by a ‘Minister in the Presidency’.
It may not be a coincidence that this is the post that the Democratic Alliance (DA) is reportedly asking for, for its leader John Steenhuisen - rather than the more obviously appropriate deputy president position. In other words, given the current cabinet structure and recent statements by the person clearly leading the DA’s strategy (Helen Zille) the minority opposition party would take control of the country’s intelligence agencies. And that comes shortly after an unremarked, but actually bombshell, claim in a newspaper article from a few weeks ago that the outgoing Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence recommended South Africa form a ‘partnership’ with the infamous ‘Five Eyes’ surveillance network.
The committee also proposed that the SSA establish partnerships with the Five Eyes states, an Anglosphere intelligence alliance made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
That is the same network that was exposed by Edward Snowden as conducting illegal mass surveillance on people around the world.1
I have been tracking developments on such issues irregularly over the last decade. Here’s a first, very brief attempt to examine what has been going on and why there is a lot to be worried about.
The basic, recent story goes something like this. (The longer story is for another time). Jacob Zuma co-opted the State Security Agency (SSA) for politically partisan purposes sometime after he became president in 2009 and the Agency became riddled with corruption. Some of this was exposed during the State Capture Inquiry chaired by then-Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. A lot of intrigue followed. Ramaphosa removed the head of the SSA Arthur Fraser but ‘redeployed’ him in Home Affairs - a move condemned by critics but explained by others as being a savvy way of keeping a dangerous individual busy.
The latter explanation found some support, however, shortly after Fraser was removed from Home Affairs, and permanently from any public positions. It was Fraser who laid the charges behind the ‘PhalaPhala Scandal’ that continues to weigh on Ramaphosa to this very day. Indeed, PhalaPhala remains very relevant at this very moment: the Economic Freedom Fighters started the first sitting of the new National Assembly by introducing a motion to continue to pursue an inquiry into Ramaphosa. (More on that in a separate post).
There was broad agreement among Ramaphosa’s supporters in the ANC and from opposition parties that the intelligence agencies needed to be cleaned up. To that end, Ramaphosa appointed the High Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency. A lot of unflattering information emerged through the activities of the Panel and the State Capture Inquiry, and no doubt these agencies were weakened by that exposure as well. (That is not to say these inquiries should not have happened, while there are also a range of concerns about how they were conducted and by whom).
It was clear that the intelligence agencies would need a strong, steady and well-informed hand to lead their restructuring and reform. Yet this is precisely what Ramaphosa failed to provide. There has been churn in crucial posts over the past 5 years which has weakened the agencies further. Various scandals and drama have been involved.
In 2020 it was announced with some fanfare that Robert McBride had been appointed to head the SSA’s foreign branch. Unusually, his appointment was welcomed by the official opposition - a doubly surprising occurrence given the degree to which McBride is hated in the part of the white South African community that supported, or did not oppose, apartheid.2 It was not long, however, before the post-2019 leadership of the agencies began to fracture.
The first notable event was arguably the suspension of Robert McBride for an apparently failed mission in Mozambique and his apparent breakdown in relationship with Minister Ayanda Dlodlo. Both individuals had deep backgrounds in the anti-apartheid movement and intelligence work in that context, but they likely had not overlapped. Dlodlo reportedly did not have faith in her remaining two top officials, Sam Muofhe and Loyiso Jafta, and in early 2021 allegedly sought to rein in one of them from testifying at the State Capture Inquiry.
Shortly afterwards, in July 2021, riots, looting and broader unrest erupted in a number of South African cities after the arrest of former president Zuma on 9 July 2021. The failure to anticipate the unrest resulted in significant public pressure on the government and the ANC, which led to a ‘blame game’ among politicians and officials. In the aftermath, three politicians - Dlodlo, Bheki Cele (Minister of Police) and the Minister of Defence (Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula) - came under particular pressure. Ultimately, Dlodlo and Mapisa-Nqakula were reshuffled while Cele managed to keep his post.
In September 2021 experts were warning that the instability needed to be resolved before the local government elections (November 2021):
Independent intelligence experts told TimesLIVE it is imperative that stability within the SSA is reached sooner rather than later, especially in the run-up to elections.
“The agency will remain in limbo as long as most of its senior officials are acting in their posts. Gab Msimanga is the acting director-general. McBride is suspended and Mashele is acting in his post. Advocate Sam Muofhe, head of the domestic branch, left at the end of July when his contract expired, but nobody has been appointed in his place,” said one.
While the July 2021 unrest certainly demonstrated the importance of domestic intelligence, the risk of election interference is arguably much higher at the national level where foreign actors have a greater interest.
After the 2021 unrest and the reshuffling of Dlodlo, the inquiry into McBride then stalled. Under the new DG of the SSA, Thembile Majola, he was eventually reinstated. But shortly afterwards it was reported that he had been redeployed to head an intelligence operation investigating sabotage at Eskom. Although some in the media and a source in the presidency tried to make this sound positive, it was clearly a major demotion.
(Little has emerged about the identification of suspects or prosecutions for sabotage at Eskom since then. The Stage 6 loadshedding immediately after the 2024 State of the Nation address was never adequately explained. A shift back up to Stage 4 loadshedding later in the month was reported to be the result of an act that sounded more like sabotage than error.)
And so the drama went on. A new director general for the SSA, Thembisile Majola, was appointed in February 2022. According to Ramaphosa her appointment was supposed to be:
an important part of our work to stabilise the country’s intelligence services…[and give] greater impetus to the implementation of the report of the SSA High Level Review Panel and the recommendations of the Expert Panel into the July 2021 unrest
In early 2023 the Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, was reshuffled and swapped positions with his counterpart in communications after the ANC’s 2022 elective conference. There has never been a substantive explanation for that decision. Gungubele’s original appointment to that key role could be linked to the fact that he worked with Ramaphosa in the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1980s. It is particularly odd that the new appointee, Stella Ntshaveni, had been implicated in improper conduct by the State Capture Inquiry. If Ramaphosa was committed to ‘cleaning up government’ and especially the intelligence agencies, why choose one of those implicated in State Capture to occupy this crucial post?
Such questions are heightened by the fact that by November 2023 Majola had resigned, reportedly due to a breakdown in the relationship with Ntshaveni.3 Given the importance of the position of director general of the intelligence agencies, it’s an obvious case where the president could and should have intervened. But he didn’t. Indeed, by this time Ramaphosa appears to have been content with the fact that the intelligence agencies were headless in the two years leading up to the elections. Given the nature of modern election interference, having those posts vacant should have set off alarm bells.
Ntshaveni’s appointment may have been due to her involvement in the ‘CR17’ fundraising campaign for Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president in 2017. There too, she was implicated in controversies related to diversion of money for personal gain. Perhaps for that reason her loyalty to Ramaphosa could be relied on, but her loyalties to the country’s interests seem questionable.
The importance of high quality intelligence on international matters was demonstrated in early 2023, when the US Ambassador Reuben Brigerty caused a major diplomatic crisis – and harm to the country’s international image, economy and public finances – by claiming that the South African government had been smuggling weapons to Russia during the Russia-Ukraine war despite its ‘non-aligned’ stance. Ultimately, Brigerty’s claim appears to have been false: no evidence has ever emerged to support it whether from the inquiry setup by the South African government or from the US government itself. This despite Brigerty saying he would ‘bet my life’ on the claim.
It is interesting that the claim was made shortly after the reshuffle of ministers, with the new arrival Ntshaveni leading the state’s political response. Brigerty was not expelled by South Africa despite the apparent falsity of his claim and the harm it caused. It is also intriguing that Brigerty’s false allegation followed shortly after Ramaphosa’s emissaries, including the chair of the High Level Panel Sydney Mufamadi, had what appeared to be positive engagements with their US counterparts.
In Part 2 I will discuss more recent developments, from the period immediately prior to the election to the reported proposal by the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and the desire of the DA for the Minister in the Presidency position.
I have examined the end-of-term reports from the JSCI on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group website and could not find this proposal. Before publishing Part 2 of this piece I intend to get more information about its veracity.
The full backstory to McBride’s positioning would take up many pages and stretches back to the 1980s. Although I will not attempt to cover it here, his significance will likely recur in later writing.
The opposition DA had criticised Majola’s appointment partly because of her long-standing role in the ANC going back to the 1980s. It is interesting to contrast that with their position on McBride that I mention in the body of the article.