Ann Eveleth
UNIVERSITY of Durban-Westville officials are mystified by the bugging of a campus union official and a mysterious “investigation” of campus affairs by suspected National Intelligence Agency (NIA) agents, who apparently claimed they were sent by President Nelson Mandela.
The conversation-monitoring device was discovered by private investigators in the office of Combined Staff Association (Comsa) Chairman Professor Dhiru Soni on Sunday during a “sweep” of Comsa and management officials’ offices and homes.
University management hired the investigation firm Ernest Robbertse and Associates to conduct the sweep 10 days after two NIA agents were identified on campus.
NIA spokesman Willem Theron refused to confirm or deny the NIA’s involvement, but said: “NIA’s responsibility is to obtain and evaluate information legitimately on behalf of its clients. NIA denies it is involved in any illegitimate intelligence-gathering activities on any university campus.”
Sources said the listening device was discovered under Soni’s desk, adhered to a radio antennae wire. Reports of the investigators indicated the 105MHz device was capable of transmitting conversations from the room to someone 50m away, and that the device had been in place for at least three days.
The discovery strengthened Comsa fears that the NIA presence could be an attempt to intimidate the 1 000- member staff association.
Comsa, which fuses the objectives of university lecturers and professors with those of low-paid staff workers, has found itself at the centre of recent campus racial tensions as well as a number of inter- staff rivalries which have plagued the campus in the past year.
A Comsa newsletter alleged this week the two NIA agents, Trevor Corbett and a woman named Carla, were “apartheid apparatchiks” who were hosted by “an Arts Faculty professor and some elements in the student body”.
Comsa Vice Chairman Reagan Jacobus reacted angrily to the incident, charging: “This is a clear invasion of our privacy and academic freedom”.
He said it was a continuing trend that “fits in with the trashing of offices, the assaults on Comsa officials, smear pamphleteering and derogatory slogans painted on walls”.
Sources said the NIA agents claimed they were sent by President Mandela. A university investigation had found this to be patently false.