President focuses on more transparent security agency
The State Security Agency (SSA) will have to drop more than a decade of cloak and dagger behaviour if it truly wants to win the trust of the public.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced wide-scale reforms to the agency during his state of the nation address last week, including the re-establishment of two arms of the SSA, focusing on domestic and foreign intelligence respectively.
He said he would, on the recommendations of the high level panel on the SSA chaired by former minister and ANC stalwart Sydney Mufamadi, be announcing a number of urgent steps to “enable the reconstitution of a professional national intelligence capability for SA”.
Among these steps would be the re-establishment of the National Security Council which will be chaired by the president “in order to ensure better co-ordination of the intelligence and security related functions of the state”.
This move takes SA’s intelligence structures back 10 years to how it was under former president Thabo Mbeki. Former president Jacob Zuma, whose background was in intelligence, reviewed the way the agencies were structured and collapsed them into the SSA.
The SSA was seen as highly politicised during Zuma’s nine years as head of the executive, with his ally Arthur Fraser appointed as director-general.
Zuma also seemed to trust then state security minister David Mahlobo more than most in his cabinet. Fraser was moved to correctional services in April 2018 , and Mahlobo is no longer a part of the cabinet.
However, Zuma’s influence on intelligence structures remains, as the agency still has to defend a legacy of being used for political ends.
What does not help the agency is that very little is known of its day-to-day work, and according to Murray Hunter from the Right2Know (R2K) campaign, that information is either old as it comes from brief annual reports, or is selectively leaked to the media. R2K has handed in a request for the report compiled by the review panel in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
Hunter said on Friday that given the huge structural change, it “can be assumed that it found quite a lot of problems and that its made some quite far-reaching recommendations”. However, to have a conversation about addressing the “significant problems” in the SSA, there needs to be a lot of information on what will be done, Hunter said.
He said this would include which new transparency and oversight measures will be put in place, as well as what changes there would be to the SSA’s mandate.
The joint standing committee on intelligence conducts oversight over the SSA, but these committee meetings are not open to the public and members require top-secret clearance.
An insider in the intelligence community said the politicisation of the agency occurred at the top and the perception that the entire organisation was deeply politicised was not the case. The insider said the leadership of the SSA should be seen as being independent from politics, such as how Shamila Batohi, the new national director of public prosecutions, is seen after she was appointed by the president following an open interview process.
Business Day was told a similar process with the SSA’s leadership could help steer things into a different direction.
“This cloak and dagger picture that people have about intelligence does seem to stay longer in their minds than what actually goes on,” the insider said. “We have to win the trust of the public. For a long time things have happened that have really damaged the trust.”
DOMESTIC, FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SEPARATED [NOW] THERE IS A PUSH FOR SSA TO BE MORE TRANSPARENT AS TO REGAIN PUBLIC TRUST
CLOAK AND DAGGER PICTURE PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT INTELLIGENCE DOES SEEM TO STAY LONGER IN THEIR MINDS THAN WHAT ACTUALLY GOES ON