Mathole Motshekga’s past has come under new scrutiny from the ANC, writes Stefaans Brummer
The African National Congress is investigating claims that Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga spied for the apartheid government.
An ANC commission of inquiry – appointed in February to investigate a string of allegations against Motshekga, primarily of financial irregularities – has now turned its attention to the premier’s alleged espionage activities.
ANC and government heavyweights have also been exploring the matter since late last year when a report detailing spying allegations was handed to the presidency by two senior National Intelligence Agency officials.
The new focus of the ANC inquiry, chaired by attorney George Negota, caps a series of blows to Motshekga’s fledgling leadership of South Africa’s richest province. There are already moves in the ANC national leadership to oppose his re-election next year.
The Mail & Guardian has pieced together some of the reasons for the disquiet in top ANC circles that has led to the investigations. Recent testimony came from a prominent black businessman, who told ANC leaders that Motshekga “confessed” to him in the late 1980s.
His version was that Motshekga – who served on the ANC constitutional committee since about 1986 and travelled often to meet the movement’s leadership in exile – told him that financial difficulties had driven him to collaborate with an apartheid security structure.
The businessman, who was not sympathetic to the ANC at the time but lived on the East Rand like Motshekga, claimed he helped Motshekga financially so he could cease his “double life”. The businessman, who prefers to stay out of the public spotlight, did not deny this version to the M&G, but refused to give details. His information is understood to have been given to Negota recently.
The first strong Motshekga spying allegation the ANC heard was in 1992 or 1993 when an ANC informant with links to the apartheid security establishment implicated Motshekga, who was ANC regional deputy chair by then.
Both an ANC national executive committee member and a former member of the organisation’s now defunct department of intelligence and security (DIS)have confirmed this, but said the information was not conclusive at the time. They said the information was that Motshekga had been meeting agents of an apartheid security structure in the Johannesburg suburb of Norwood or neighbouring Houghton.
The allegations appeared to have been dusted off last year when Motshekga, against the wishes of a strong lobby of provincial and national ANC leaders, contested the position of provincial ANC chair vacated by former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale. The opposition was based, inter alia, on concerns about Motshekga’s handling of donor funds when he administered an NGO, the National Institute of Public Interest Law and Research (Nipilar), some years ago. There were also concerns about the spying claims.
Some time after Motshekga won the election race last September, two National Intelligence Agency members, both formerly with DIS, handed a report to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki re-investigating the previous allegations and making new claims. President Nelson Mandela was also made aware of the contents.
A senior government member this week told the M&G there were ongoing investigations into the contents of the report, but this was being hampered by the destruction of official intelligence documentation before the 1994 elections.
The report names former security branch area commander Willem “Timol” Coetzee, one of the more notorious creations of apartheid’s security machine, as one of Motshekga’s alleged “handlers”. Two well-placed members of South Africa’s apartheid-era security establishment have claimed independently to the M&G that Motshekga reported to Coetzee.
Another senior member of the old security branch, who knew Coetzee well, told the M&G that Coetzee handled a large number of sources in the liberation movement from Norwood police station. “Coetzee was in charge of investigating the cross-border activities of banned organisations. He handled 26 informers at that time, which is more than any officer can effectively handle.” He said this meant Coetzee’s sources could be unmasked, as they were seen by each other.
Coetzee has applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for a number of serious human rights violations. The amnesty application pre-empted his likely arrest by the special investigations team of Transvaal Attorney General Jan D’Oliveira on serious charges including murder.
Coetzee served with the notorious Koevoet police unit in former South West Africa before returning to South Africa in the early 1980s, where he later rose to become commander of the East Rand security branch.
He was suspended from the police two years ago, and later forced into early retirement, after new police management under former Gauteng MEC for safety and security Jesse Duarte discovered troubling aspects of his past, including his alleged role in the 1983 disappearance and murder of Nokuthula Simelane, a young South African activist studying in Swaziland.
Negota’s commission of inquiry was appointed by the ANC national leadership in February after a series of articles in the M&G aired allegations including that Motshekga maladministered donor money at Nipilar and misrepresented the scale of the organisation’s activities to donors.
The M&G also pointed out the incongruous relationship between Motshekga and Professor Andr Thomashausen, who headed the Institute of Foreign and Comparative Law at Unisa and long served as front-man for the Mozambican rebel movement Renamo.
Thomashausen’s links with the apartheid-era military intelligence establishment is common knowledge, as was the security establishment connections of a number of Thomashausen’s employees at the institute. Said one former employee: “By 1991 the institute … had been turned by Thomashausen into something akin to a military intelligence front.”
Motshekga joined Thomashausen’s institute in about 1986. His relationship with the institute – but not with Thomashausen – ended in June last year. Motshekga has claimed his relationship with Thomashausen was no more than academic, an assertion contradicted by strong evidence of a close friendship.
Included in the Negota inquiry’s terms of reference were issues of financial management, accountability to donors and administrative style. Also included was the brief to probe “the exact nature of comrade Mathole’s relationship with anybody in so far as it may have had a negative effect on the ANC”. This final instruction opened the way for Negota’s commission to probe not only Motshekga’s relationship with Thomashausen, but also the possibility he spied for the apartheid government.
But the ANC has long had a dilemma in dealing with allegations of spying against its own members, and has rarely taken action against even those about whom strong evidence exists.
Clearly there was an initial uncertainty within the Negota commission on how to deal with the spying allegations against Motshekga, but a decision was taken recently to confront the issue. An official at the ANC’s Shell House headquarters this week confirmed the commission was investigating the allegations.
National heavyweights earlier attempted to handle the Motshekga dilemma – and the embarrassment the controversy surrounding him has caused the ANC – in a “quiet” fashion.
Though he was never a party establishment favourite, the national leadership avoided moving decisively against him last year, fearing that interference would only reinforce the perception that the popular will was being subverted. A national executive committee source claimed the top leadership last month started a process to make sure Motshekga does not contest next year’s elections – effectively the end of his premiership.
But Motshekga’s troubles have multiplied in recent weeks. Last month’s elections for a new provincial executive failed to return members of his original support base to top positions, while infighting in the provincial executive and administration has continued unabated. It emerged this week that provincial Director General Vincent Mntambo, regarded as a Motshekga ally, had tendered his resignation on March 24.
Mntambo’s resignation letter, which is in the M&G’s possession, accused Motshekga of flouting administrative procedures and policy in the way he ran his office, and of undermining him (Mntambo).