SA does not need another Inquiry into intelligence, it needs a complete overhaul of all three intelligence structures

29 July 2021

The DA calls on National Assembly House Chairperson, Cedric Frolick, to clarify his comments on SAFM that a second parliamentary inquiry would be held by the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI) to look into Crime Intelligence, the State Security Agency (SSA) and Military Intelligence.

Mr Frolick is not a member of the JSCI, nor does he control it or what it does. He has no right whether to determine that this committee holds or does not hold an inquiry.

That being said, an inquiry into this matter and the evident disfunctionality of those three entities if done by this committee, would never see the light of day. The DA will continue to push for legislative reform so that the outcome of such an inquiry would be made public.

The High Level Review Panel Report into the SSA decried the excessive stress on secrecy – and this inquiry would, I have no doubt – be buried along with, for example, various criminal charges laid by the DA against Arthur Fraser – never again to see the light of day.

The DA has welcomed Parliament’s plan to institute an inquiry into the insurrection which took place in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, and we most certainly do not see the need for a second inquiry into intelligence.

South Africans are inquiry fatigued, and a second probe by the JSCI would achieve nothing in that it would be shrouded under a veil of secrecy.

In addition to this, the High-Level Review Panel Report into the SSA is packed with recommendations and an in-depth look into how the SSA had been captured and looted. South Africa therefore doesn’t need another inquiry into these recent intelligence failures which had this Security Cluster caught with its pants down, added to which have been the revelations of the President’s phone being bugged, and the catastrophic Transnet cyberattack. The evidence of the decay of these three units is already out in the public domain.

Let us repeat our call from January this year: what is required is a complete disbandment of the SSA which should then be replaced with a lean, independent, efficient and transparent state security entity.

In Crime Intelligence, what is needed is the immediate reinstatement of General Jacobs – whose expertise is currently wasted elsewhere – and for the SANDF to learn how to react with speed and not to drag its heels, then arrive completely unprepared when asked to assist in a matter as serious as the one in KZN and Gauteng three weeks ago.

None of this – not one shameful shred – should it ever be allowed to be hidden away from the South Africans who pay them billions just to do their job.

Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA Shadow Minister of State Security, 29 July 2021