Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report

The COSATU Central Executive Committee (CEC) yesterday discussed the Parliament Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence report. We welcome the statement, which fully vindicates the Federation's view that the Directorate of Special Operations, better known as the Scorpions, produced the Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report illegally and in contravention of their mandate.

The report claimed that a conspiracy, both inside South Africa and on the continent, was fuelling ANC president Jacob Zuma's presidential ambitions.

COSATU has consistently maintained that the report was designed to destabilise and foment divisions within the ANC, its allies and South African society in general. It was produced and distributed by former apartheid security service and retired intelligence officials to as part of political battles within our movement, and that Jacob Zuma was being targeted to satisfy the political agenda of some people who operate clandestinely. It

The report to parliament confirms that the DSO made use of informants, information peddlers and private intelligence companies to produce the report. The Committee chairman, Siyabonga Cwele, noted that "the DSO ... fell prey to information peddlers and that they took no corrective measures after the report was produced.

"They [the DSO] did not take any action against the senior special investigator from whom the leak originated. They also neglected to take action against the illegal activities of those who were involved in the production of the Browse Mole report."

COSATU has called for the Scorpions' integration into the South African Police Service, and we demand that those responsible be identified and arrested.

Statement issued by COSATU Central Executive Committee, February 27 2008