SSA move to Presidency may lead to further secrecy, Parliamentary oversight crucial 

10 August 2021

The least surprising of the changes made to the Cabinet was the doing away with the State Security Agency (SSA). There had to be severe lessons seen to be taught, and the Ministers of State Security and Defence were the ones who caught it in the neck.

As expected, the President’s close ally, Police Minister Bheki Cele, was left unscathed, despite all accounts that of the three security cluster entities, the South African Police Service (SAPS) performed by far the worst.

Naturally all fingers are now pointing to the National Police Commissioner, General Kehla Sithole, who should probably be counting up his pension benefits which may have to come into play in the near future.

By far the biggest move was to simply do away with an entire Ministry – the State Security Ministry – and to sweep it and its Deputy Minister under the Presidency. Indeed, the President claimed that there were many countries in the world which have the Intelligence agencies (in our case, the State Security Agency, Crime Intelligence and Defence intelligence) answering directly to the President.

The President’s move follows the catastrophic failure of the Security Cluster in predicting (flatly denied by the-then Minister of State Security), and preventing (SAPS members were either invisible, or stood back and watched as billions of rands worth of stock and infrastructure went up in smoke) an uprising that killed 337 people, and all but destroyed the KwaZulu-Natal economy and greatly damaged that of Gauteng.

Heads had to roll, for this and so many other catastrophic outcomes by tepid Ministers.

We have a history – laid out in shocking technicolour detail in the High-Level Review Panel report on the SSA – of the previous President using the Intelligence cluster for himself and himself alone.

Is President Ramaphosa strong enough to withstand the siren call of such? This move puts us in serious jeopardy of replaying the catastrophe that was Jacob Zuma and the Security cluster, and the increase in the secrecy stranglehold swirling around this group – rather than dealing with the unnecessarily excessive secrecy as condemned in the High-Level Report.

Will there come a time when our rights to freedom of expression may become politically inconvenient and labelled a threat? This is a very real possibility.

The President has claimed that there are countries which place Intelligence directly under head of the country – obviously we will be asking him which countries these are. Additionally, we welcome the reliance on Dr Sydney Mufamadi (author of the High-Level Report) as security adviser. However, we can’t be seen to be putting the future of South Africa at risk of such a crucial entity as the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI) once again being used as a private beach for a President.

An obvious move to allay such fears would be the establishment of a Joint Standing Committee on the Presidency – a dedicated committee which has oversight power over all the affairs of a Presidency.

State Security now joins other entities under the Presidency, which currently runs the structures on investment, infrastructure, project management and Operation Vulindlela.

Indeed, it has come full circle and is back where it started, under a Deputy Minister for Intelligence serving at that time under the Justice Minister. Once again it is no longer a stand-alone Ministry, but this time directly answerable to the President.

Despite the High-Level Report, the security cluster – specifically State Security – is still a morass of issues wrapped in a cloud of confusion and lead by the dominant faction of the day. It seems the Matthews Inquiry report of 2008 and the High Lever Report of 2018 together, have achieved very little indeed.

To quote: “Excessive secrecy gives rise to suspicion and fear and this reduces public support for the services. In a democracy, unlike a police state, the services must rely on public cooperation rather than coercion to be successful.”

Shifting State Security under the President is merely shifting it under the President. It won’t decrease the levels of secrecy, nor decrease the public suspicions.

Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, Spokesperson on National Intelligence, 10 August 2021