Beware, the snake might be dead but those who share its secrets can still bite
New ANC leader needs to examine the intelligence services and pull some rotten teeth before trying to depose the president
● It would be foolhardy of Cyril Ramaphosa to push for Jacob Zuma’s recall as president without control of the top five and the national executive committee. Undoubtedly, ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and his deputy, Jessie Duarte, as well as other Zumaaligned NEC members such as ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini, Nkosazana DlaminiZuma and Mosebenzi Zwane, would vehemently oppose such a motion. If it failed, Ramaphosa would become a lame-duck president.
Most important, Ramaphosa should not push for Zuma’s recall without control of the security services, especially the intelligence services. Although Zuma has lost all his legal battles, he is not a dead snake, as he once described his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. His survivalist strategy lies in the intelligence services — that is, dirty files he has on his comrades-cum-foes.
Gayton McKenzie partly reveals this in Kill Zuma by Any Means Necessary, which takes the form of an intelligence report designed to “enemise” Ramaphosa and anyone who has called for Zuma’s recall, or has any association with businessman Johann Rupert.
Reading the book reminded me of former NPA head Vusi Pikoli’s revelation that Mbeki believed certain parts of the Browse Mole Report — which alleged there was a plot within the security and intelligence services to subvert the state apparatus to advance Zuma’s presidency — but had said, according to Pikoli, that “the report intertwined fact with fiction”.
Similarly, I believe certain parts of McKenzie’s book but have difficulties with others.
His revelation that only Zuma, Joe Nhlanhla, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela knew about a list of ANC members who were apartheid spies may be true.
Mbeki would not have appointed a commission of inquiry to investigate whether former NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy if he knew who was on the list.
The allegation surfaced after Ngcuka had announced that the state had a prima facie case of corruption and fraud against Zuma but had decided not to prosecute, claiming it was unwinnable.
The inquiry exonerated Ngcuka.
McKenzie seems to know who is on the list. He implies that former MK commander Siphiwe Nyanda, who has called for Zuma’s recall, was an apartheid spy. It would not come as a surprise if allegations surface that Ramaphosa or anyone in his circle was also an apartheid spy. It is part of a plan to enemise them.
Then there is the question: how did McKenzie get hold of classified information? He claims to have obtained the details of a plot to assassinate Zuma from someone he met in prison. Perhaps someone should tell him about this legendary quote: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
In 2013, calling on the NPA to charge the Guptas for landing a private plane at Air Force Base Waterkloof, EFF leader Julius Malema said Zuma “discusses sensitive government and
ANC decisions with the Guptas”. If indeed he does, what would prevent him from doing the same with McKenzie?
If Ramaphosa replaces Zuma as South African president, he should appoint a judicial commission of inquiry to find out how McKenzie got hold of classified information, and to investigate the rot within the State Security Agency as detailed in Jacques Pauw’s book The President’s Keepers.
The inquiry should also investigate a Russian hand in our body politic. If Russia could hack the US presidential election and propel Donald Trump to power, how hard could it be to do the same to a politically compromised country with the poorest intelligence services in the world?
It would emerge during the inquiry who has hacked Ramaphosa’s e-mail accounts and leaked his e-mails on extramarital affairs to Weekly Xposé, a fake news site owned by McKenzie’s friends, Kenny Kunene and Sunday Independent editor Steve Motale.
This trio, with the Guptas, Zuma and his faction and Black First Land First chief anarchist Andile Mngxitama pose a national security threat.
In Eight Days in September, Frank Chikane wrote: “I have seen the frightening spectre of factions within the party battling to control or corrupt elements of the intelligence services to ensure that they served their party factions or individuals, rather than the security interests of the state and people of South Africa.”
Chikane, who has operated at a “top secret” level on the National Security Council, also said that “these elements could corrupt our intelligence services to an extent that foreign entities could take over government”.