What hope for intelligence reform under the new leadership in South Africa?
blurb:isstoday7Oct2008Intelligence
7 Oct 2008: What hope for intelligence reform under the new leadership in South Africa?
The past few weeks have been particularly turbulent in South African politics: presidents coming and going, ministers resigning permanently and temporarily and new ministers taking to the stage. In all this, the premature exit of former Minister for Intelligence Services, Ronnie Kasrils, went largely unnoticed. For a few observers, the departure of Kasrils signals the end of an era in the security governance of the state within which he endeavoured, in both the defence and intelligence ministries, to foster more openness, transparency and accountable governance.
Importantly, his departure from the intelligence ministry before 2009 raises questions about any possible reforms to the intelligence sector that could have come out of the report of the Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence. The Commission was established in 2006 to review the civilian intelligence domain after the abuses that occurred during Project Avani and the Billy Masetlha crisis. One of the last tasks that Kasrils managed to do was to release the report of the Commission to the South African public.
The report of the Commission was originally due in November 2007 and it was expected to lay the foundation for some significant reforms in the intelligence sector, specifically regarding the use of intrusive methods of investigation and domestic intelligence activities. The role and function of the domestic civilian intelligence service, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), is actually a critical issue which unchanged will continue to provide the potential for infringements, not only on civil rights but also on the democratic fabric of the South African political environment.
Particularly debatable is the domestic political intelligence mandate of the NIA. According to the Commission’s report, since 2003, driven by a cabinet instruction, the NIA widened its mandate to include ‘every aspect of human endeavour upon which good order and the prospects for a prosperous future depend’. This broad instruction was broken down into political intelligence priorities, which included instability due to transformation within the government, intra and inter-party competition and the impact of political decisions on stability.
The question now is whether or not the new caretaker minister will attempt to instil changes in the governance of the intelligence sector, or rather, whether or not it is even in the interest of the new ruling regime to create change within the intelligence sector? As an essential tool in the state security arsenal, the intelligence services have an important role to play in order to deter threats to the security of the state. But what happens if that security becomes defined as the security of the ruling regime or continuity of the ruling regime? Without any constructive change within the current intelligence governance framework, the covert tool of state security can be employed to serve the interests of the political masters in a partisan and, quite possibly, non-democratic manner.
It is obvious though, much as it was in 1994, that the domestic political intelligence mandate is an instrument of power that a ‘new’ authority would like to retain. Is it in the interests of the new power faction to make legislative amendments that would not allow for the monitoring and investigation of domestic political affairs when it is most likely that the major threat to the new regime will come from a domestic challenge?
Furthermore, the commission’s report slams the controls on the use of intrusive methods of investigation and certain forms of surveillance as unconstitutional. The recommendation was for comprehensive legislation governing the use of intrusive methods of investigation (including infiltration of an organisation, physical and electronic surveillance and the recruitment of informants) and for more intensive requirements for judicial and executive control over these special powers. Again the question can be asked: is it in the interest of the new leadership to make domestic spying more difficult?
Since 2005, the NIA has been dogged with accusations of politicisation of the domestic intelligence function and has been portrayed as being embroiled in the Zuma-Mbeki succession debacle. The fact of the matter is that without tightening the mandate of the domestic intelligence agency, the abuse of power remains a realistic possibility. This might not manifest as gross abuses of human rights such as have been witnessed at the hands of the civilian intelligence community in Zimbabwe but the possibility for infringements on the rights to privacy and access to information remain. Importantly, too, the most primary basis of intelligence is information. Control of information, the flow of information, content and access holds a certain power. Think also of the potential hazards of misinformation, the manipulation of information and domestic propaganda.
But in the end this could turn out to be neither a study in the development of a democratic intelligence service nor the second wave of intelligence reform. This could just turn out to be a question of bad timing. The report was released at a time when it quite literally fell off the media radar, with other political issues dominating the public limelight. The timing of the departure of the minister is also telling and the potential for reforms rested on the strength of the leadership to accomplish a highly political task. At the end of the day, if there are no reforms, and it is doubtful whether there will be, it will probably be explained by vague terms such as lack of political will but it is most likely that change in the intelligence sector will not occur mainly because of bad timing. The report of the review commission needed to come out months ago for the public to really utilise it as a tool for advocacy. The change in the political environment now means that the report could largely serve as window dressing, the ideal reforms for a different government at a different time.
Lauren Hutton, Researcher: Security Sector Governance Programme, ISS Pretoria Office
