President Jacob Zuma's announcement (May 10) of his new appointments (an excessive 34 cabinet ministers and 28 deputy ministers) is worth closer study. He has split some ministries, renamed others, and created new ones such as the two ministries in the presidency - a National Planning Commission (Trevor Manuel) and Performance Monitoring and Evaluation as well as Administration in the Presidency (Collins Chabane). A sort of Operation Confusion.
Negotiating a path through the ANC these days is like trying to find one's way out of Hampton Court maze, but fortunately a lucid explanation is offered by Frans Cronje in the SA Institute of Race Relations (see article):
It is recommended reading.
The impression is of a wary Zuma. He has appointed some dozen ministers, deputies, officials, political advisors and others, steeped in Intelligence, who constitute what might be called a praetorian guard (the guards of the Roman emperors). It is not quite clear though who they will serve: protect Zuma on behalf of Cosatu and the SA Communist Party if he is challenged for the ANC presidency in 2012; make sure they outwit others who want him to toe Luthuli's House's line (ANC headquarters); or just have an Intelligence fest, a kind of Secret Policeman's Ball (to recall an old movie), without being clear who spies on whom - while Zuma chuckles in the background.
Also required reading is the City Press (mainly a black readership), which claims that Gwede Mantashe, ANC secretary-general, who also moonlights as chairman of the SA Communist Party, "appears to be usurping the powers of President Jacob Zuma in a blurring of lines between party and state." Mantashe has been summoning ministers to Luthuli House (ANC headquarters) to talk about their official duties. Since when does the apparatchik lord it over the political minister?
Mantashe summons cabinet ministers to Luthuli House to question them. City Press says Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni is set for a trip to Luthuli House (South Africa's new White House?) for talks with the National Union of Metalworkers. It asks: "Can you imagine George Brown or Barrack Obama having such respect for apparatchiks"?
Recently, at a private gathering, one of the country's most prominent black outsiders (not a politician), remarked that under Zuma the country would be run by men and women who had been "trained by the Stasi (East German security police) and the KGB".
It is often forgotten quite how close the ANC of exile was to East Germany. In his memoirs, the East German spymaster, Markus "Mischa" Wolf wrote that the Stasi trained ANC agents "to spot potential moles, confuse them, and track them down without giving themselves away. The courses began every three to five months, and the South Africans were fervent students, soaking up all the knowledge we felt we could safely give them on the known methods of their enemy services and the psychology of interrogation". This suggests a serious entry of trainees.
Vasili Mitrokhin, for many years a KGB archivist before defecting to Britain, has produced two books - co-written with Christopher Andrew - on the archives he managed to smuggle out of Russia. In the second volume, the authors note that in the "ill-concealed" struggle between Gorbachev and Castro, the SACP was "unmistakably on Castro's side." And "Within the Soviet bloc...the SACP leadership now looked not to Gorbachev's revisionist regime, but to Erich Honecker's hard-line East Germany for inspiration. At the Havana conference it announced its ambition to ‘build East Germany in Africa' after the fall of apartheid."
The problem with South Africa's spooks, however, seems to be that quite a few of them are double or triple agents.
Journalist Jeremy Gordin quotes another (unnamed) source: "Hey, it looks like the (Vula) boys and girls are back." Vula (The Way Forward) was the name given to a secret operation conceived by ANC president Oliver Tambo and SACP leader Joe Slovo. Launched in 1986 under the command of Mac Maharaj, it took shape as an intelligence structure between 1988 -1990. Heavily supplied with arms, Vula would step in militarily if the ANC/apartheid negotiations failed, or FW de Klerk's regime double-crossed the ANC.
Vula went wrong. The apartheid security police penetrated it, rounding up operatives in July 1990 (after the return of exiles) to the acute embarrassment of ANC/SACP leaders then immersed in reconciliation talks with the government. Padraig O'Malley (Shades of Difference: Mac Mahara and the Struggle for South Africa (Viking, 2007) quotes the ANC's Pallo Jordan as telling Maharaj in 2004 that the prevailing view in the ANC leadership was: "Let Mac and them stew, disown them'." Three months later, eight Vula operatives were put on trial and two allegedly murdered by the security police.
From Swaziland, Zuma was in command of an underground structure in KwaZulu-Natal called Operation Bible, which had successfully infiltrated the security police through the Shaik brothers, prior to the secret arrival of Mac Maharaj and later Ronnie Kasrils in SA. Zuma had been appointed ANC chief of intelligence several years before 1990. Mo,Yunus and Jay Naidoo ran Operation Bible, successfully infiltrating security police data bases, communications and some personnel. They reported directly (though often via Pillay) to Zuma. Maharaj reported to Tambo and Slovo."
Mo Shaik refuses to comment on rumours that he is returning soon to Security and Intelligence under Zuma, yet in appointing the praetorian guards, Zuma seems to have trawled mainly among the Vula operatives.
In Apartheid's Friends (John Murray publishers), James Sanders said Vula involved "many players," but "significant" were Janet Love, Mo Shaik (an East German-trained intelligence operative who headed Vula's intelligence structure), Dipak Patel, Pravin Gordhan, Raymond Lalla and Billy Nair." (See Jeremy Gordin's detailed report on Vula operatives now in Zuma's camp here, and Paul Trewhela's penetrating articles here and here).
Key figures in the new guard
(The praetorians are not necessarily in the order of importance in which they appear below).
Siphiwe Nyanda (alias Gebhuza):
Zuma's Minister of Communications. Military training in East Germany and Soviet Union. Commander of anti-apartheid guerrilla activities in South Africa. In 1988 Nyanda visited Moscow and London, returning to South Africa in 1989 to become Maharaj's deputy in Vula. After the ANC's take-over in 1994, he was integrated into the SA National Defence Force as Lieutenant General and appointed chief of the Defence Staff in the same year. Nyanda played a major role in the unseating of Mbeki at the Polokwane conference in December 2007.
Vusi Mavimbela
Director General of Zuma's presidency. Left SA to join ANC in 1976. In the autobiography written for the SACP by Mavimbela, (ANC pseudonym "Klaus Maphepha", SACP pseudonym "Themba"), Mavimbela wrote: "In 1977 I went to Angola where I did six plus three months of military training. In 1978, I went to a party school for ten months (in the Soviet Union?). In 1979 I went to the GDR for three months to do a course in the provision of security."
Political advisor to Thabo Mbeki 1994-1999 when Mbeki became president. Director-General: National Intelligence Agency (1999). Special Advisor on Intelligence & Security Matters to Deputy President Mbeki 1998-1999. In 1999, as a Stasi trained "spymaster," Mavimbela was snapped up by Tokyo Sexwale's billionaire Mvelaphanda holdings. In 2006 Sanders prophetically (?) wrote: "Sexwale is the South African version of the Russian oligarchs. The fact that he is assembling experienced intelligence operatives around himself signals a continuing interest in political activity and quite possibly a campaign for the Presidency."
Pravin Gordhan
Minister of Finance. Formerly Commissioner of the SA Revenue Service. Detained 1981. On ANC radical wing. Vula strategist. Involved in constitutional matters since 1994. Member 1994 SACP Central Committee and ANC MP.
Charles Nqakula
Political advisor to Zuma. Vula commander in the Western Cape in the late 1980s. As SACP general secretary, succumbed to pressure by Mbeki to snuff out a plot by communists to dominate Mbekites in ANC's National Executive Committee (he is now a lower-ranking member of SACP Central Committee). Joined informal 24-member Consultative Council which met secretly at Mbeki's house to give him advice. Drawn by Mbeki into supporting GEAR (Mbeki's orthodox macro-economic programme and shown a secret document on it).
Ivan Pillay
A senior Vula commander ("administration and project co-ordination" in Lusaka). SA Revenue Services head of investigations. Close to Gordhan.
Lindiwe Sisulu
Minister of Defence and Military Veterans was a member of the ANC's Directorate of Intelligence and Security and of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Minister of Intelligence 2001-2004, creating in 2003 an Intelligence Services Council.
Dr Siyabonga Cwele
Minister of State Security (formerly Intelligence) since 2009. Minister of Intelligence 2008. MP since 1994. Chairperson of Standing Committee on Intelligence which usually meets behind closed doors. Served in ANC underground structures (1984 - 1990). Prominent in the creation of the parliamentary report on the controversial Browse Mole report, which chastised Scorpions for campaign against Zuma.
Jeff Radebe
Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development. Lawyer [completed legal studies at the Karl Marx University, Leipzig). Joined Umkhonto (MK), military wing of the ANC, working underground. During years in military training, specialized in Intelligence. While a member of SACP Central Committee secured cabinet office under Mbeki. Rated by Mail & Guardian as "party hack."
Nathi Mthethwa
Minister of Police. Formerly low-level cadre. Managed dissolution of Scorpions and creation of new police directorate of priority crime investigation.
Collins Chabane
Minister in the Presidency (Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and Administration): ANC since 1980, military training in Angola, underground from 1981. Arrested 1984 and imprisoned on Robben Island.
Gordin quotes Janet Smith in the Sunday Independent as referring to "the possible revival of Operation Vula in the political imagination may be further inspired by the rumoured return to centre of one of the party's most controversial and colourful figures: Mo Shaik."
Gordin adds: "The Shaik brothers - Mo, Yunis and Schabir - were not strictly part of Vula. And yet in a sense they were." Gordin mentions others who were in Vula: Ivan Pillay, Raymond Lalla (became head of SA Police Intelligence and is still a leading police figure) and Solly Shoke (now Army chief).
Also named by Gordin is Ayanda Dlodlo, newly appointed as Zuma's Parliamentary Counsellor. In the Soviet Union, she trained in military intelligence as a young Umkhonto we Sizwe cadre during the 1980s. "When I saw socialism at work, I said: ‘Wow, this is the system I want for my country'" (see article). Trained in military intelligence in Soviet Union. ANC MP and NEC, secretary-general of MK Military Veterans' Association). Led MK deputation to persuade prosecutions chief to drop corruption charges against Zuma. Was, for a time, one of the three most senior Scorpions, guiding investigations into arms deal corruption and the alleged involvement of Zuma and his adviser Schabir Shaik.
So this is the issue: Is Luthuli House, not the presidency, running the country, with Cosatu and the SACP fighting to keep Zuma in office? The ever-vocal Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu secretary general, said he knew people were complaining about "Zuma being a stooge of people in Luthuli House." But "that is exactly how it should be." Yet last month (June) when Vavi said Zuma should have a second term as ANC president (Zuma can stay on as South Africa's president until 2014), Mantashe snapped back that Cosatu should mind its own business.
Yet "spokespersons" insist that the Tripartite Alliance (ANC, Cosatu, SACP) are a happy family. Isn't it time this farce stopped?
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