Wally Mbhele
The arrest of Robert McBride on charges of gun-running in Mozambique seems to have been a well-co-ordinated police trap, planned with the man he was captured with, Vusi Mbatha, Mozambican gun-runner Alex Mamba, and the South African security forces.
There is concern that old-guard elements of the South African military and police assisted the Mozambicans in setting up McBride because his investigations into arms smuggling to criminal syndicates in South Africa, including the highway heist gangs, had unearthed links to the security forces.
It has now emerged that Mbatha himself has a long history of working with the former South African military intelligence (MI) as well as being a police informer, while Mamba is also a police agent. The Mail & Guardian has the name of Mbatha’s MI handler.
Mbatha, who it is believed may emerge as the chief witness against McBride, is actually not a South African as widely reported, but a Mozambican holding a South African identity document. The other potential witness is Mamba who, the police allege, has s ince escaped. But they have not explained how were they able to set a trap inside his house without his knowledge.
A former official of Lawyers for Human Rights, Aubrey Lekwane, who has been working with McBride since they first met Mbatha – alias Madida – in 1993, spoke out publicly this week against what he sees as a plot against McBride. In an exclusive interview with the M&G, Lekwane said he is prepared to become McBride’s witness against Mbatha’s allegations and that he has conveyed his concerns to Minist er of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi.
Lekwane revealed that Mbatha has made conflicting statements about the Third Force since 1993 to, among others, Lawyers for Human Rights, human rights lawyer Steven Goldblatt and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In all instances he was found to b e an untruthful witness.
The reason why McBride took him to the truth commission last year, according to Lekwane, was to tell the commission during the “Winnie hearing” how he was used to infiltrate Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s household with the purpose of conducting a smear and disinformation campaign against her.
It was during a meeting with one of the commission’s international investigators that Mbatha began making fresh allegations that gun-running was continuing – and even went further to claim that the Mozambican gun-runners were now supplying South African criminal syndicates. The commission confirmed this week that they had taken a statement from him.
Lekwane, who worked for Lawyers for Human Rights for eight years, says when he heard of McBride’s arrest, he was almost certain that “he had been arrested while making a follow-up on Vusi’s claims. I contacted [Mpumalanga Premier] Mathews Phosa immediate ly and informed him that I believed that I had information which would be useful in this matter.”
Although the exact status of the structure within which McBride was operating has not been established, the former Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) guerrilla was not on a personal mission. It has been established that he made an official requisition for money (in t he form of $11 000) before he left.
The M&G has established he was working with a “special operations unit”, understood to have been established late last year after word filtered out that organised gangs with apartheid links were planning to destabilise the government through crime.
The unit was allegedly created to feed data to the National Intelligence Agency on destabilisation forces and is under the management of a former MK commander. The reason why both the ANC and the government are unable to come into the open about this uni t, sources said, is because it is too embarrassing for the government to be seen to be running parallel intelligence structures.
The initiative flows out of the failure of conventional intelligence units to provide the high-grade information that the government needs. The unit has also probed the movement of South African arms with the alleged connivance of security force operativ es to Zambian bases of the Angolan rebel movement Unita and to other countries in the region such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. A report on this was being prepared for the upcoming Southern African Development Community conference.
The reason why McBride is unwilling to speak about this structure, said a source, is because he does not want to betray anyone. However, a senior government source indicated this week that McBride’s arrest was being dealt with at two levels. At the offic ial level, they are denying the operation was authorised but the source said “some of our guys” – intelligence operatives – had gone to Maputo to deal with the issue through the back door.
Meanwhile, the government this week began a shift in its approach to the saga. After a week of silence in the face of growing criticism, Mufamadi told Parliament this week that there was a clear “disinformation” campaign against McBride by elements withi n the security forces.
This followed a series of statements issued by assistant police commissioner “Suiker” Britz, who implied that McBride was guilty of gunrunning. Having been linked to among others, the Irish Republican Army, Britz went further by revealing that MI has inf ormation that McBride was involved in a plot to destabilise the government.
A senior government official working closely on the McBride matter said this week although the government did not want to be seen to be disturbing the Mozambican probe, he suspected that “Britz has naughty motives. With an old mindset, he has seen an opp ortunity to sow confusion as if his views reflects those of the government.”
Britz rushed to Mozambique once McBride was arrested. On his arrival in Mozambique, he was not interested in speaking to McBride, and demanded to see Mbatha.
A South African police officer who was asked to identify McBride in a Mozambican jail described him as “a very dangerous man”.
“For a government employee to describe a senior government official in that manner is most telling about their attitude to McBride,” a friend of McBride’s said this week.
Meanwhile, McBride’s wife, Paula, also questioned some of the dates for when police say her husband was in Mozambique. She said the first time McBride went to Mozambique was in January this year.
The second time was on March 11 when he was arrested. According to Paula McBride, he was on a “follow-up investigation”, unaware that a trap had already been set for him. She described reports that McBride has been in Mozambique in 1993 as a “lie”, argui ng that the police have even attempted to suggest that he was in Mozambique during the ANC’s conference in Mafikeng last year in December.
In some of his confessions to human rights institutions, Mbatha claimed to have participated in alleged Inkatha Freedom Party attacks on the ANC, have fought for Frelimo and joined the ANC mission in Angola, said Lekwane. Lekwane said he first met Mbath a after he mysteriously infiltrated ANC structures on the East Rand. Mbatha has on numerous occasions taken him and Robert McBride on a “wild goos e” chase to the scenes of alleged massacres.
Lekwane is making a sworn affidavit for Mufamadi. He has handed the M&G his preliminary unsigned affidavit.
Police representative Reg Crewe said he did not know whether Mbatha was a spy. “It’s not our policy to reveal the names of informers. Whether it was a joint set-up between Mozambique and the SAPS [South African Police Service], I can’t comment as the inv estigation is in the hands of the Mozambicans.”