Reviewing Andrew Feinstein's book, After the Party, James Myburgh wrote that the mystery source for a famously accurate report on Mbeki's address to an ANC parliamentary caucus meeting had finally come forward. On October 6 2000 the Mail & Guardian had published an article by its political editor, Howard Barrell, on an address by President Thabo Mbeki to the ANC caucus in parliament the week before.
The article reported a series of bizarre pronouncements by Mbeki on the AIDS issue. Its account was so detailed that many ANC MPs were convinced there were electronic listening devices in the caucus room, and the following week it was swept by the police for bugs. Feinstein admits, in his book, to being the primary source for the article. "What probably saved Feinstein from any real scrutiny," Myburgh comments, "was the fact that the ANC leadership were utterly convinced that Mbeki's address had been bugged."
As a young political correspondent in 1959, I too experienced the bugging syndrome - the reluctance of political parties to believe they had an informer in their midst. As Joel Mervis, editor of the Sunday Times wrote in his book The Fourth Estate (1989), "the sting lay in the revelation of alleged disloyalty by members leaking secrets to a newspaper." I had reported several clashes in the National Party caucus, usually involving Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, and under pressure the Chief Whip, J.E. Potgieter, was becoming agitated. In one report, I quoted Potgieter as saying in caucus that "he was in despair over the disclosures in the Sunday Times and that the caucus might just as well be declared a public meeting." Mervis tells the tale in his book.
To cut a long story short, Potgieter began a search for the source of the leaks. He, too, believed the caucus was being bugged, but 1959 style, not the sophisticated bugging of 40 years later with electronic gadgets. His brightest idea was to conclude that somehow I was listening in to the caucus proceedings. The Nat caucus room was on the first floor of the House of Assembly building, adjacent to a courtyard that flanked the old lobby. The courtyard, unused, had glass-panelled doors. But in the far corner was a drain pipe, running up the wall, past the caucus room (by at least two metres), and into the heights of the building.
Potgieter decided that the pipe needed investigating, so he positioned one of his men next to it, with instructions to keep his ear firmly to the pipe. Meanwhile, other members of the search-and-destroy team were sent to the caucus room to talk freely and loudly among themselves. Would the listener in the courtyard be able to overhear the fake meeting? Alas, no. Not a word. Potgieter had drawn a blank. I did not report his high-tech failure - it would rub salt into his wounds and spur him on to greater efforts, which was not what we wanted.
But there was an outcome. One day, a week or two later, Verwoerd summoned one of the caucus MPs to his room, and bluntly accused him of leaking information to the Sunday Times. The MP felt it was pointless denying it. Obviously he had been shadowed. That was the end of his political career. I consoled myself with the thought that he had become disillusioned with the NP anyway, otherwise he would not have leaked so prolifically. Also, I think he was fairly content with his retirement. He was going nowhere in parliament and he knew it. But I still felt guilty when I thought of the social ostracism he must have experienced on his return to his constituency. It must have been a very frosty homecoming.
Talking about bugging, I had my own experience about a year later when the country was in turmoil after the Sharpeville shootings. I was in the Press Gallery at lunchtime when a telephone rang, and the caller, an official who worked in parliament, asked for me by name. He said "I want to put a bomb under these buggers", and could I see him immediately. I walked to the parliamentary parking ground to my car and drove to the address the official had given me. As I did so, I noticed a car with four Special Branch detectives in it racing in what seemed to be the same direction. There were two streets with very similar names, and realising that I was in the wrong street, I slowed down.
The SB men overtook me, without noticing me, but realising, too, that they had the wrong address. I backed off slowly, and drove to the correct house. I did not see the SB car again. It turned out that the ‘bomb' the official wanted to plant concerned his pension - he felt he had been given a raw deal. A week later, I saw him, under SB escort, being taken into the lobby, presumably to his office. He glared at me, as if I had betrayed him. I restrained an impulse to rush forward and explain to him what had happened. I think his career ended, too.
What impressed me was the alacrity with which the SB had responded to the phone call - they reached the destination at exactly the same time as I did. I was never interviewed. Even the SB men, many of whom were rather dim, must have realised that a pension complaint was not going to blow up parliament.
