Intelligence

◆ National and provincial governments and most of civil society believe there was a major intelligence failure relating to the July unrest.

◆ The intelligence community said it gave sufficient warning on the levels of dissatisfaction among the population and the dangers and possible consequences of this.

◆ The panel was informed that some “products” were shared directly with the president, as it should be, and when it came to others, the former minister of state security said she wanted to share them directly with Ramaphosa, but did not get an opportunity to do so. The panel did not see those “products”.

◆ Both sides agreed that neither the politicians nor security services anticipated how the violence would unfold, perhaps because it was partly organised and partly spontaneous.

◆ The failure of reliable intelligence on the unrest shows the urgent need to implement the recommendations of the highlevel review panel on the State Security Agency.

◆ A credible professional intelligence service must be rebuilt urgently, given that the faceless people behind this attack on the State were aware of the weaknesses of the security services.

◆ The intelligence services failed to predict the nature, scale and modus operandi of the violence.