NB Publishers, the publishers of The President’s Keepers by Jacques Pauw, has received a cease-and-desist letter from the State Security Agency (SSA) demanding that we withdraw the book from the stores and retract parts of the book.

The SSA is further threatening to go to court to get an “interdict preventing [NB Publishers] from further distribution, further printing, publishing or promotion of the book” should we not withdraw it from the book shops, and “institute criminal charges against you and any other individual concerned in relation to those parts of the book which are in violation of the relevant statutes.”

The SSA says in the lawyer’s letter, sent this week, that: “… we record that the book contains parts that are in contravention of the Intelligence Service Act, Act 65 of 2002”.

“As our client is constitutionally mandated to ensure the security of the State and protect the identity of its members and agents, it has a duty to act in instances where such security is breached either by disclosure of its legitimate operational methods, classified documents, as well as the identity of its agents,” says the letter.

This follows the publication of Jacques Pauw’s explosive new book, The President’s Keepers, by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers, on 29 October 2017.

In the book, the highly respected journalist and author Pauw – who exposed the apartheid-era Vlakplaas death squads when he worked for the anti-apartheid Vrye Weekblad newspaper – blows the lid off South Africa’s gangster state. The President’s Keepers exposes how millions of rands of tax payers’ money flowed into the bank accounts of bogus spies among other stunning revelations about President Jacob Zuma’s compromised government and dirty tricks in SA’s law-enforcement agencies.

NB Publishers stands by our author, Jacques Pauw, and the book, The President’s Keepers.

Our attorney will respond to the SSA’s letter.

Statement issued by NB Publishers, 3 November 2017