SIPHO MASONDO | Rollout of reforms a significant but belated reckoning for SA’s intelligence system

The failure of South Africa’s intelligence community to anticipate and contain July 2021’s devastating unrest left the government exposed. Now, as March and March readies itself for the “anti-immigrants” march this week, citizens do not expect the country’s intelligence apparatus, and the State Security Agency (SSA) in particular, to be caught flat-footed this time.

From the SSA’s perspective, there should be several urgent, short-term, as well as deeper long-term concerns about March and March. As a matter of urgency, intelligence operatives need to figure out and inform bureaucrats in the security cluster if the planned march could potentially descend into violence, leading to loss of life and serious damage to property — which was what happened in July 2021.

In the long-term, intelligence agents have to figure out, if they haven’t already, whose idea is March and March, their interests or agenda, if it has links to far right and extremist groups and its source of funding.

In an ideal world, not only would what the SSA finds about March and March create a template for how to deal with similar events in the future, but it would also shape the government’s future response, policies and legislation around illegal immigration.

It would be extraordinary if March and March’s planned demonstration against foreigners catches the SSA flat-footed, given that the country’s National Security Strategy (NSS), adopted by the cabinet in July last year, explicitly flags illegal immigration as a key national security threat.

Coincidentally, the SSA is one of the architects of the National Security Strategy. But strange things have happened in this country, and we cannot assume as a foregone conclusion that the SSA is on top of things.

That caution is not misplaced — it is informed by experience. In July 2021, South Africa witnessed a catastrophic intelligence failure: even the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee (Nicoc) — the body responsible for coordinating intelligence across the security services and advising government on national threats — failed to identify, or act on, critical early warning signs.

The result was predictable. Large parts of the country descended into chaos — 354 people were killed and the violence cost the economy more than R300bn in damage to property and infrastructure, while the state was left scrambling with a belated and hopelessly inadequate response.

Intelligence failures are rare — but when they occur, the cost is devastating.

Major intelligence failures often prompt governments to initiate sweeping reforms. In the United States, the failure of intelligence ahead of the September 11 2001 attacks led to one of the most significant overhauls of an intelligence system in recent times.

A series of significant lapses and missteps by the intelligence community in America resulted in attacks that saw terrorists fly two planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A third plane hit the Pentagon, America’s defence headquarters, while a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. A staggering 3,000 people were killed during the unprecedented attacks.

Following the tragedy, now commonly referred to as 9/11, the US government introduced sweeping reforms to the intelligence community. As a direct response to 9/11’s intelligence failures, authorities introduced the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a body that coordinates the work of that country’s 18 intelligence agencies. This office is critical in that in turns fragmented information into coherent insights for political and bureaucratic decision makers.

Meanwhile, back home, the effort to rebuild the SSA after its systematic hollowing‑out and near-total destruction under former president Jacob Zuma, aided by the agency’s former ministers, the mindless apparatchiks Siyabonga Cwele and David Mahlobo, and abetted by corrupt operators like Arthur Fraser — the entity’s erstwhile director-general — is only now beginning to take shape.

In mid 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a team of intelligence experts and academics to unravel what happened at the SSA during the Zuma years. The team — known as the High-Level Review Panel and chaired by Sydney Mufamadi — found that Zuma had politicised, factionalised and repurposed the SSA to serve him and the interests of individual ANC leaders. The most damaging aspects of the repurposed SSA was the deliberate creation of parallel intelligence structures, the ruthless capture of the agency, the brazen looting of hundreds of millions of rand, and the weaponisation of the entity to spy on political opponents and civil society.

Zuma had also introduced wholesale but chaotic changes, including the establishment of the SSA itself, through the amalgamation of the two separate agencies that formed the country’s civilian intelligence — the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the South African Secret Service (SASS). The NIA was responsible for handling domestic intelligence while the SASS took care of foreign intelligence.

Mufamadi’s team recommended a complete overhaul of the SSA, including that the agency be depoliticised, split into two (domestic and foreign intelligence), the adoption of a National Security Strategy, improved intelligence coordination and the strengthening of oversight and accountability.

This centre ensures that our response to national threats is no longer reactive but is instead guided by a single, coherent narrative of the risks facing our nation.

—  Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni

The establishment of the National Centre for Intelligence Coordination (NCIC) this year, which is conceptually similar to the ODNI, flows directly from the proposals made by the panel.

The NCIC, launched in April, is a permanent office that executes Nicoc’s coordinating function by integrating intelligence from different security services and government departments such as home affairs and the Financial Intelligence Centre, ensuring that decision‑makers receive coherent intelligence and can respond effectively to national security threats.

Delivering the SSA’s budget vote in parliament last month, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said of the NCIC: “This body represents the final piece of the puzzle in our quest for a unified national security picture and strategic reforms. The NCIC serves as the daily integration hub where Nicoc (the committee ie. heads of SAPS-Crime Intelligence, Defence Intelligence, South African National Academy of Intelligence, and South African Intelligence Service) regularly meets to synthesise raw data into actionable wisdom for the executive and execution.”

It is through the full functioning of the NCIC that we are finally breaking down the silos that once allowed organised crime and saboteurs to flourish in the gaps between departments, she said.

“This centre ensures that our response to national threats is no longer reactive but is instead guided by a single, coherent narrative of the risks facing our nation,” she added.

Ntshavheni also announced that as per the recommendations of Mufamadi’s panel, during the current financial year, the SSA will be disestablished, and it will be replaced by two distinct entities: the South Africa Intelligence Agency (SAIA), for domestic intelligence and the South African Intelligence Service (SAIS) for foreign intelligence.

The National Security Strategy is already in place.

It is not a gross exaggeration to conclude that had the NCIC been in place in July 2021, it is likely that the unrest may have been detected and promptly averted.

It is deeply troubling that it has taken nearly a decade for government officials to begin implementing the core proposals of Mufamadi’s panel — a delay that is as glaring as it is indefensible. Yet, while the procrastination cannot be overlooked, the steady rollout of reforms marks a significant, if belated, reckoning with an intelligence system that was allowed to drift dangerously off course.

• Masondo is a senior investigative journalist for the Sunday Times