02 Aug 2007: ISS Today: South Africa: Understanding Objective Reality Accurately

2 August 2007: South Africa: Understanding Objective Reality Accurately

 

As South Africans we are living through very interesting times. With our own eyes we see the new struggling to be born. During our lifetime we are exposed to the images of the slow death of the old, and its desperate and hopeless efforts to secure its survival.

 

And because, for us, every development of significance around us is without precedent, we search constantly and continuously for levels of understanding of our reality and forms of action to respond to this actuality, which would assure us that we are masters, or mistresses, of our destiny.

 

For this reason, and for those among us who see themselves as agents of progressive change, complete and accurate knowledge, representing accurate understanding of objective reality, liberated from prejudice, false assumptions and propaganda, becomes an imperative and inalienable condition for the untrammelled but responsible exercise of the hard-won right to self-determination.

 

We have the possibility and latitude and the necessity to speak thus because we live during our own age of revolution. Exactly because it is such an age, all of us face the demand to understand objective reality accurately and objectively, to enable the revolution to decide on the correct strategy, tactics and operations.

 

President Thabo Mbeki, Letter from the President
ANC Today, Volume 7, No. 29
27 July – 2 August 2007

 

President Mbeki has urged South Africans to face the demand of understanding objective reality accurately and objectively. This call comes at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult in the South African domestic political environment to identify fact from fiction, reality from paranoia, truth from lies and intelligence from manipulation. The stakes are high in the race for control of the ANC, the office of the presidency, the government of South Africa and the very state itself. The actors in the drama that could determine the future of the nation, are playing a stealthy game involving disguise and deception, making it very difficult for South African citizens to understand reality accurately and objectively. All we know is that there are scandals and rumblings with only two commonalities: the intelligence services and the ANC succession debate.

 

There is much that is currently in the realm of the ‘unknown’. What we know is that trade union federation COSATU, long time ally of the ruling party, believes that there is a conspiracy being engineered by the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (commonly known as the Scorpions) to frustrate Jacob Zuma’s presidential aspirations. COSATU is also very much part of the Zuma powerbase of ‘Machine-gun Song’ singing, anti-Mbeki economic liberalism rivalry. The latest conspiracy is a sequel to the National Intelligence Agency’s (NIA) belief in 2005/6 that a similar plot was under way to ensure that Zuma would be removed permanently from the South African political scene. This plot was later declared to be a hoax based on bogus e-mails, which resulted in the dismissal of the then Director-General of NIA, Billy Masetlha followed by a number of court cases, subpoenas and a ministerial review commission. In an interesting development the ANC’s National Executive Committee subsequently rejected the report of the Inspector-General of Intelligence, claiming that the political conspiracy was, in fact, a hoax aimed at securing Masethla’s removal.

 

A few months ago, Zuma was again in the headlines concerning alleged plots to assassinate him. Crime Intelligence investigated the assassination saga, but there has been a distinct lack of clarity in the public domain as to whether or not there was any substantive proof of a plot.

 

On the one hand there seems to be a victimisation campaign being waged by means of various secret reports and investigations, having as the common denominator a political conspiracy to oust the former head of ANC Intelligence, former deputy president, Jacob Zuma. On the other hand, it is interesting to notice the sudden re-emergence of controversies related directly to the politics of the apartheid era.

 

The high level of discord within the ANC is almost palpable at the moment, and turning attention to the historic enemy of the ANC, in the form the apartheid era officials and white economic elite, could serve as the necessary unifying force to reinforce the position of the Mbeki camp. As reported by SouthScan (v22/15 27 July 2007), there are increasing signs that the government is preparing to highlight racial inequalities and the legacy of apartheid in the run-up to the key ANC nomination congress in December. This has manifested itself in the NPA’s prosecution of apartheid era minister of police Adrian Vlok former police chief Johann van der Merwe and three former senior officers for the attempted murder of Frank Chikane, the current Director-General of the Office of the Presidency in 1989. 

 

In addition, the local press has once again picked up on the issue of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) hit squads, which were widely held responsible for the destabilisation of Kwa-Zulu Natal in the 1980s and 1990s. This issue was investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), although no action was taken at the time. In summary, the apartheid era, largely military intelligence, structures, were involved in supporting the formation and training of IFP paramilitary forces. This support included training, financing, identifying targets and supplying weapons. The IFP hit-squads story has resurfaced with rumours that former president FW de Klerk had full knowledge of the attempts by apartheid securocrats to bolster opposition to the ANC leading up to 1994, to reduce the possibility of the ANC achieving an absolute majority.

 

According to James Sanders’ book, Apartheid’s Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Secret Service, on 20 December 1985, former President de Klerk attended a special meeting of the State Security Council, at which authorisation was given for the provision of assistance to Inkatha for the establishment of a security force. The nature of intelligence being secret, and plausible deniability being essential, talk of prosecuting the former president seems overly dramatic, however, and more for shock value and designed for diverting public attention to the transgressions of the past. Furthermore, this comes at an opportune time, as the current ANC government is facing increasing dissent in the form of the public service strike and service delivery protests. 

 

For the Mbeki camp, the re-emergence of the old apartheid enemy is coupled with a renewed focus on the economic disparities of modern South Africa, which could offset the socialist rhetoric of the trade unions. In recent articles on the ANC website, President Mbeki has been drawing attention to economic inequalities and the continuing domination of the business sector by elements of the white population. By painting apartheid as the root cause of all discontent, and white economic power as the enemy of development, Mbeki could be playing the race card to create an external opponent for the ANC, thereby uniting the organisation’s traditional base. 

 

This could, of course, all be false conjecture and an incorrect interpretation of reality. Another version, which Frank Chikane, Mandala Manzini (current Director-General of NIA), NPA boss, Vusi Pikoli and Barry Guilder of the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee are offering to the national media, is that the current Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report, which outlines a plot by Zuma and others to overthrow the government, is predominantly the product of members of the former apartheid police Special Branch, Military Intelligence and National Intelligence Service, or people who had relations or associations with these services. On this perspective, a ‘Third Force’ style conspiracy is targeting the ANC with the intention of producing intra-party conflict, thereby weakening the ruling party, the government and the state.

 

Just after the Special Browse Mole statements, Adrian Vlok and others were charged with the attempted murder of Frank Chikane, strengthening the perception of a link between attempts to destabilise the ANC and the apartheid era security forces. The government statement on Special Browse Mole claimed that there was a considerable degree of clarity about the role-players involved in the leaks, their modus operandi and their intentions. None of this information has, however, been made available to the public.

 

There are a number of unanswered questions. Who stands to gain from a destabilisation of the ANC, except elements within the ANC itself? What can a group of apartheid-era intelligence and security operatives truly hope to achieve in terms of political or economic power by destabilising the ANC? Is there really any chance given the outright majority of the ANC, that any person other than the leader of the ANC will become State President? 

 

All this said, one may conclude that until the ANC nomination congress in December, the lack of complete and accurate information is going to make it difficult to understand objective reality accurately in the South African domestic political environment. The only advice is to watch carefully and to critically evaluate any information pertaining to current events in the South African domestic politics. Information is power, and those who control information control the manner in which the public perceives the environment. And, as we all know, those at the ANC congress in December are going to vote according to their perception of reality.

 

Lauren Hutton, Researcher, Defence Sector Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)