A US-linked consultant offered to advise on the premier’s security, writes Stefaans Brmmer
A private security adviser this year made a bizarre proposal to spy on be- half of Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga.
The Mail & Guardian is in possession of a draft contract between the premier’s office and security consultant Bob Power – composed in consultation with Abel Rudman, frontman for military intelligence during the apartheid era.
Motshekga this week claimed Rudman “is not my friend”, but documentary evidence shows an evidently cosy relationship spanning several business ventures.
Rudman’s apartheid-era military work was exposed in 1991 when it was revealed that a newspaper he owned in Botswana was a front for the then South African Defence Force. Strangely, he claims to have been an African National Congress member since 1990.
The M&G has a copy of a letter written by Power to Rudman on January 16 this year, four days before Motshekga’s inauguration. It proposes services including “personal security” and “appropriate surveillance exercises and security input on circulation of confidential documents”.
On January 27, Power submitted a draft contract between his consultancy, Power Corporate Consultants, and the premier’s office. It listed services to be rendered to the premier, including “surveillance”, “personal security”, “investigations”, and “discreet areas”.
On January 24, Power wrote a confidential assessment on the premier to his Washington partner, Edward Badolato. A retired United States marine colonel still well connected in the US security establishment, Badolato is president of USAfricon, a private security and intelligence outfit that consults with US companies wanting to do business in Southern Africa. Power runs the local arm of USAfricon.
Power this week denied the contract with Motshekga’s office was ever signed. But whether he performed the spying service or not, it could have led to a dangerous scenario: a South African premier bypassing official intelligence and police agencies and in the process exposing sensitive information to a private operator with strong foreign links.
Power and Rudman’s relationship goes back to at least May last year, when Power wrote to Rudman proposing to consult on a resort development planned by Rudman in Motshekga’s home area of Modjadji. At about that time, Motshekga also became involved in the resort project.
Power this week told the M&G that his proposal to Motshekga, via Rudman, came as a result of his doing the assessment on Motshekga for Badolato. He says he contacted Rudman, whom he already knew from the Modjadji project – and whom he understood to be “a very close adviser” or “consultant” to Motshekga – to gather information for the assessment.
Power said Rudman asked him to make proposals on security for the new premier. “I was under the impression Abel [Rudman] was wanting to streamline things [for Motshekga’s administration] through various committees. One of them would have been a security committee where from time to time they would need the services of a private security company.”
Power made his written proposal to Rudman, followed by the draft contract. Power denies the proposal was to spy for the premier, claiming that “any security consultancy uses these terms [used in the draft contract]”. He claims he assumed the matter would be “in the public domain” and go to tender. Power claims nothing came of the proposal, and that he never performed any of the services outlined in the contract.
In 1996 and last year USAfricon negotiated with Thebe Investment Corporation subsidiary Vuna Industrial Holdings – a company close to the ANC – to start a joint-venture security company. Thebe this week confirmed cutting off negotiations.
But USAfricon seems to have had a degree of success with the Inkatha Freedom Party. Early last year it sponsored Minister of Correctional Services Sipo Mzimela to speak in Washington. A well-placed political source says USAfricon has tried to make deals with the South African Police Service and that in the process it has been in contact with Deputy Minister of Safety and Security Joe Matthews, also an IFP representative.
IFP MPKoos van der Merwe has acknowledged to the M&G that he has acted as “lawyer and adviser” to Rudman.
Motshekga’s representative, Makhosini Nkosi, this week commented: “We do not know that person, as the office of the premier, and no money has been paid to him.”