The new head of the secret service, and his deputy, will be looking out for the dangers and opportunities facing the country, reports Gaye Davis
THEY’VE been described as student radicals, and
they’ve certainly got the T-shirts earned during careers which took them from student activism to jail, exile and working underground for the African National Congress. But Billy Masethla, the new head of the South African Secret Service (Sass) and Barry Gilder, his deputy, would prefer to have themselves seen as “democratic spies”.
Their appointment brings the former comrades-in-arms full circle: they once worked together briefly in Botswana. Masethla, now 41, landed there in 1979 following his release from jail after helping as an underground ANC operative direct the uprising unleashed by events in Soweto in 1976 and reorganising the student movement, helping launch the Congress of South African Students and the Azanian Students’ Movement.
Gilder, now 46, served a term on the national executive of the National Union of South African Students (Nusas) before heading for London and ANC membership in 1976. He joining Umkhonto weSizwe and the ANC’s department of intelligence and security (DIS) in Angola in 1979. He headed DIS in Botswana from 1983 to 1989 and served with Masethla on the regional political and military council.
Had the struggle not intervened, Masethla might have become a teacher; instead, he was trained in military combat work in Angola, specialising in intelligence and counter-intelligence and completing an intelligence officer’s course in the former East Germany.
Gilder, blessed with a rich baritone, was known for the political songs he wrote and performed at Nusas congresses. In exile he got involved in cultural politics, helping stage the Culture and Resistance Festival in Gaborone in 1982, before undergoing guerrilla training, specialising in intelligence, in the former Soviet Union.
He doesn’t sing in public anymore, he says, “Except in the bath when I have time to have a bath. It was impossible to keep up singing underground, apart from entertaining comrades in safe houses.”
His and Masethla’s training different in style and content to that undergone by South African intelligence agents under the old order has advantages, Gilder says.
“The training those of us in the ANC got in the former Soviet Union and East Germany, seen in relation to the training my present colleagues from the old order got, stands us in good stead as a service. We now have the best of both worlds.” Their mission, defined by the changed realities of post- Cold War geo-politics and South Africa’s transition, involves refocusing Sass. The old “them and us” paradigm no longer applies: national security today is defined less in military terms and more in terms of the full range of political, economic, military, social, religious, ethnic and technological factors that shape security issues around the world.
Closer to home, they have to oversee the cementing together in Sass of the various contrasting attitudes and styles of operating that the amalgamation of operatives from the liberation movement, the Bantustans and the old secret service has brought about.
“Our biggest challenge is to change the focus and direction of Sass. The amalgamation brought to the party people who targeted each other in the struggle. That basis for intelligence has gone.”
Masethla’s wealth of experience in political intelligence and organisational work are said to stand him in good stead for this. “He is a very energetic person, very disciplined, with good leadership skills and a commitment to measured, achievable transformation,” said an intelligence source. “Despite his background, he is able to carry all sectors of the service behind him which is a very necessary skill in this period.”
In addition, new legislation passed this year has set up a range of checks and balances none of their predecessors ever had to worry about. Said Gilder: “This means we have to change how we behave and how we collect intelligence.”
He described Sass’s role as providing the government, which now has completely different information requirements, with “the kind of intelligence it really needs and that will make sense to it”.
The presence of foreign intelligence services had “increased quite dramatically”, he said. “South Africa has become the pet interest of many countries in terms of trade and economic opportunities and political influence in Southern Africa and Africa. The bigger powers are keen to know what makes us tick.
“Our strategic goals, in broad strokes, are to effect a transformation where we can change the nature and conduct of intelligence so as to be able to provide this new government with the intelligence it needs to conduct foreign policy and trade effectively with other countries and to watch out not only for dangers, but also for opportunities for the country.” [Pic:Gilder] [pic:Masethla]