What is the motive for e-mail leaks?

Alot of political dust has been stirred up since the leaking of e-mails which allegedly detail President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fund-raising activities during his campaign for the ANC presidency in 2017. Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has denied that she or her office were responsible for the leaks – yet what was contained in the communications was used by her in an attack on the integrity of Ramaphosa.

His office has pointed out that he was never furnished with copies of those e-mails by Mkhwebane and that these had, presumably, been obtained illegally. And therein lies the rub.

It is not so much about the e-mails, but about who obtained them. The public protector’s office has proved itself spectacularly unable to do much, so it could not have been them. And the only people capable of intercepting e-mails would be sophisticated IT “spooks”.

Those people are generally employed in spy agencies – either South African of foreign. The prospect of local electronic messages being intercepted are worrying.

If our own spies are being used by people to further a political objective, then it is an abuse of state resources. Not only that, there is a very real question about what other serious threats to national security are being allowed to slide because people are involved plotting against their comrades.

However, it is equally perturbing that a foreign intelligence organisation may be behind the leaks for its own agenda … and an agenda which means it wants to place an influential individual in a position where he or she must return the favour.

In the same way, questions could also be asked about the origin of the “Gupta leaks” e-mails, which saw the whole state capture can of worms opened up.

There is a motive for everything; we need to ask what it might be.