Mondli Gungubele, has removed the board of directors of the South African Postbank amid allegations of an unlawful contract worth R140 million. (Photo by PRESIDENCY OF SOUTH AFRICA/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday announced that minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele would assume political responsibility for the State Security Agency in a move analysts said might not be unrelated to the fire that ravaged parliament early this month.
The presidency said the step was in line with Ramaphosa’s announcement on 5 August last year that the ministry of state security would be done away with and responsibility for the entity would in future reside in the presidency.
That decision followed about a month after deadly violence — termed a failed insurrection by Ramaphosa — ripped through KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, ostensibly triggered by the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court.
Asked about the five-month delay in formally naming Gungubele as the new political authority for intelligence, the presidency said Ramaphosa needed to take legal advice on the recalibration this entailed.
“President Ramaphosa has assigned political responsibility for the state security agency to the minister in the presidency after considering legal opinions on the delegation of powers and responsibilities related to state security,” his office said.
The move comes a fortnight after much of parliament, including the National Assembly, was reduced to ashes in a fire. The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) are pursuing arson charges in the matter.
Constitutional law expert Dan Mafora said the timing might relate to the fire, but there were reasonable grounds for the presidency to take legal advice on the matter, for two notable reasons.
This was firstly because deputy ministers – and here it relates to deputy intelligence minister Zizi Kodwa – do not sit in cabinet, and certain information was only available to members of cabinet.
Secondly, intelligence is the one portfolio without its own dedicated portfolio committee, raising questions about oversight. This is more so because the joint standing committee on intelligence [JSCI] meets behind closed doors.
“Deputy ministers don’t sit in cabinet, so it is difficult to have oversight at a national political level [because] the president’s interactions with parliament are limited, and the work of the JSCI takes place behind closed doors so nobody is quite sure what happens there,” Mafora said.
But he added that the fire at parliament may have left Ramaphosa feeling out of the loop because, given the fact that Kodwa was a deputy minister, it was not quite clear whether the SSA was reporting directly to Ramaphosa or to the president through Kodwa.
“So I think this allows him some space to create an expectation on someone else to keep tabs on the SSA. And so, I would be surprised if it was motivated by the fire but I do think that there might have been a legitimate reason for him to seek advice about what he has done beforehand,” Mafora said.
That said, he added, Ramaphosa may have been caught off guard because Kodwa may have been running the administrative side of intelligence whereas the actual reports would have to flow directly to the president.
“In terms of the legislation, the president would have been the immediate superior to the head of the SSA and so it might have just been him not being hands-on or up to date with what was happening there and that is how he got caught off guard.”
Political analyst Stephen Friedman said the presidency would deny that the move was an indictment of Kodwa.
“I guess they would say that it isn’t because Kodwa is only a deputy minister and he retains that status. But it is legitimate to assume that. If they were happy with him, they would not have done this,” he said.
In his weekly newsletter on Monday morning, Ramaphosa warned that the country needed to shield against attacks on the country’s democratic order, and said South Africans had watched the blaze at the legislature in horror.
Kodwa was appointed in a cabinet reshuffle in August, prompted in the main by the need to replace then suspended health minister Zweli Mkhize and finance minister Tito Mboweni, who had expressed a wish to be released. It saw Ramaphosa fire Ayanda Dlodlo as state security minister and bring in Kodwa as deputy minister in the portfolio.
At the time, referring to the July violence, the president said: “While calm has been restored to the affected areas and our law enforcement agencies are working hard to bring those responsible to justice, we have acknowledged that our security services were found wanting in several aspects.”
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