Jacques Pauw
Does the rot stop here?
● Illogical, irrational and outright idiotic.
This is the only way to describe former president Jacob Zuma’s appointment of Arthur Fraser as South Africa’s spy boss in September 2016.
With the stroke of a pen, a man accused of possible treason and setting up a parallel intelligence network that wasted R1-billion of taxpayers’ money became one of the most powerful civil servants in the country.
As director-general of the State Security Agency, Fraser held the key to telephone tapping, spying, surveillance and bags of dirty tricks that he might well have unleashed against newly elected President Cyril Ramaphosa and those close to him.
Remember the bogus intelligence report Zuma used to fire then finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, almost exactly a year ago? Or the “tremendous foreign and local threats” that the then state security minister David Mahlobo identified following Fraser’s appointment?
Fraser is out-and-out a Zuma relic and his appointment was probably a reward for a job well done. According to the Mail & Guardian, it was
Fraser who gave the notorious “spy tapes” to the former president’s attorney in 2007.
Fraser was then deputy director-general at the National Intelligence Agency (predecessor of the SSA), and that was also the year that he embarked on the Principal Agent Network project.
PAN was an orgy of wasteful expenditure, fraud and corruption. Fraser and his cronies appointed 72 agents — they were never vetted and some had criminal records and others were family members — for whom he purchased 293 cars, including BMWs, Audis and Golf GTIs. The cars were stored in warehouses across the country that had been leased for R24-million (his son was the manager). PAN also leased and purchased properties totalling R48million and imported three “technical surveillance vehicles” from the UK for more than R40-million. And this was just the tip of the iceberg.
In 2010, the then state security minister Siyabonga Cwele appointed a team, including an advocate and an auditor, to investigate PAN. During the probe, Fraser resigned and some of his cronies were suspended.
The investigators found that Fraser had attempted to set up a parallel intelligence network. The PAN agents had to send their intelligence reports to a private server he installed at his house. This flouted SSA procedure and raised the spectre of treason.
The investigators produced at least three reports and briefed several cabinet ministers. The Hawks, the Special Investigating Unit and the South African Revenue Service were pulled in to do prosecutions, asset forfeiture, lifestyle audits and tax assessments.
Then everything ground to a halt and overnight Cwele lost his lust for any further action. This was the moment, my sources told me later, when Zuma got a whiff of the probe.
The documents were collected at SARS, the SIU was told their investigation would be too expensive, and the Hawks were told to put their work on hold.
The SSA internal reports were handed to the then inspector-general of intelligence, Faith Radebe. She did her own investigation, which dragged on for several years.
It is important to understand that the IGI is the only person who has oversight over the SSA. He or she can walk into the SSA, demand to see any file or document, investigate any project and speak to any agent or official.
Inspector-general reports are top secret but SSA spokesman Brian Dube assured us that Radebe had made no criminal findings against Fraser and merely recommended that the agency should deal with “noncompliance with some operational directives”.
The IGI found that “in the course of employment, PAN members were tasked to conduct illegal activities without securing proper authorisation”. She said millions of rands were blown because “financial controls were nonexistent” and called on Mahlobo to conduct a forensic investigation “to establish the flow of monies” to determine criminal culpability. He never did anything.
When Mahlobo and Zuma appointed Fraser as our spy boss in September 2016, they had the reports of both the internal investigation and the IGI in their possession. They inexplicably appointed a man suspected of treason as the guardian and the keeper of the integrity of the president and the republic.
Mahlobo lied through his teeth when he praised Fraser for his astute managerial skills. Dube said the PAN matter was “considered closed”.
In the smoke and mirrors of the spook world, and protected by Zuma, Fraser was king. He restructured the agency to give himself even more power and appointed his cronies in key positions.
He appointed his right-hand man at PAN, alleged family member Graham Engel, as the national coordinator of all intelligence. Engel had been on suspension with full pay for three years pending the outcome of the PAN investigation.
Another PAN manager, Prince Makhwathana, was also appointed in the top echelon of the SSA. He sat at home for around five years doing nothing while earning an estimated R6-million in salary.
When SARS investigators commenced with audits of the PAN managers, they discovered that Makhwathana and his wife owned seven properties, four of which were bought during the PAN period.
The SSA might have succeeded in burying the evidence — until I spoke to past and present state security officials while writing The President’s Keepers. They leaked me the reports of the internal investigation, and I went to Russia to speak to one of the investigators, Advocate Paul Engelke, then a lecturer at the Moscow State University.
Fraser’s reaction to my book was a mixture of fury and bluster. He attempted to remove it from the shelves — which only helped sell more copies. He laid criminal charges against me, as did SARS commissioner Tom Moyane.
Fraser promised to sue for defamation but was silenced when the IGI report was given to me about a month after publication of the book. Its content was reported in this newspaper and in the Daily Maverick.
With the election of Ramaphosa, the spider’s web started unravelling.
Last month I received a call from the new IGI, Setlhomamaru Dintwe, urgently seeking a letter to say that it was not him who had leaked his predecessor’s reports. I gave him such a letter.
It turned out that Dintwe — appointed in 2017 after the post had been vacant for almost two years — was investigating the allegations against Fraser, including his possible complicity in treason.
Fraser would have none of it. He revoked Dintwe’s security clearance and refused to give him access to classified material.
It was an unprecedented situation in that Fraser, who is subject to Dintwe’s oversight over himself and the agency, had stripped Dintwe of the means to do his job. Fraser had in effect prepared Dintwe’s removal.
Even before Fraser’s outrageous behaviour, rumours abounded that his days were numbered. He was on Ramaphosa’s “hit list” from day one. Usually impeccable sources told me that Fraser was willing to resign in the hope that the investigation against him would be abandoned.
Ramaphosa’s inner circle regarded Fraser as dangerous and wanted him where they could keep an eye on him. “It is better to have someone inside pissing out than outside pissing in,” one said.
The president decided it wise to move Fraser to correctional services. I think he should have been suspended.
The SSA is a terminally ill, divided and compromised organisation that was abused to prop up criminal networks around Zuma. Just think of the dirty tricks role that the SSA played in the demise of the top structure of SARS. It engaged in covert and offensive countermeasures to influence events in favour of Zuma.
I would be committing an offence if I reported how many people work at the SSA and what their annual budget is, but believe me it is massive, bloated and unjustifiable.
The agency has dismally failed to provide strategic intelligence on state capture. The Guptas and their cronies ultimately threatened state security by looting the fiscus. Where were Fraser, Engel and Makhwathana when all of this happened?
Ramaphosa now has the opportunity to weed out the rot and transform the agency into an efficient machine. It is good news that Dintwe’s security clearance has been restored and that acting SSA director-general Loyiso Jafta has promised his full co-operation. But let this just be the beginning.
Believe me, [the SSA budget] is massive, bloated and unjustifiable