Chiara Carter
A snap parliamentary debate is likely to be called by the African National Congress next week in a move to defuse the row over claims that the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) was involved in transporting explosives and did not pass crucial information on to police.
Government sources said the debate was likely to be motivated by the Joint Committee on Intelligence, the parliamentary committee tasked with overseeing intelligence matters.
Opposition parties want a full explanation of the extraordinary testimony heard during the bail hearing of Ayob Mungalee – one of five men arrested in the Karoo last month on charges of possessing unlicensed guns and explosive devices.
However, President Nelson Mandela is waiting for a report from the Ministry of Intelligence.
Meanwhile, ANC members of the intelligence committee – scheduled to meet next week – said they would not call for a report on the matter because “it was in the hands of the courts”. This contradicts a statement issued by presidential representative Parks Mankahlana, who said the matter would be examined by both the ministry and the committee.
A meeting by Deputy Minister of Intelligence Joe Nhlanhla and Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi to iron out the conflict did not take place because Mufamadi was abroad.
But opposition parties are unlikely to let the matter rest. Both the Democratic Party and the New National Party have demanded a commission of inquiry into the allegations that stem from the bail hearing.
Mungalee told the Oudtshoorn Magistrate’s Court he was an NIA agent guaranteed indemnity from prosecution and that the NIA photographed two pipe bombs without confiscating them or making them harmless. He said the NIA paid him to transport explosives on one occasion and on another told him to deliver explosives to People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) co-ordinator Abdoes-Salaam Ebrahim. The NIA disputes these claims.
Meanwhile, police are investigating a charge of obstruction of justice after a computer, which apparently contained a history of Mungalee’s NIA involvement, disappeared from his Johannesburg home. An unsigned statement by Mungalee also disappeared.
Superintendent Henry Beukes told the court that he understood NIA involvement in Pagad was receiving high-level attention and that the lack of co-operation with police could lead to NIA operatives being shot by police.
This week, intelligence ministry representative Helmuth Schlenter said an internal investigation had been under way since Nhlanhla was informed of the circumstances of Mungalee’s arrest. This has not satisfied DP leader Tony Leon, who this week wrote to Mandela’s Director General, Jakes Gerwel, expressing dissatisfaction at the “NIA investigating itself”.
Leon said that while Nhlanhla had said there was close co-ordination and co-operation between the police and the NIA, testimony at the bail hearing revealed this was anything but the truth.
Leon said it was urgent that public confidence in the NIA be restored – a view privately shared by ANC politicians, who were further alarmed at another blow to the agency’s image by the arrest of NIA member Temba Dwango for armed robbery on the West Coast earlier this week. Schlenter said Dwango had been suspended.
Meanwhile, senior NIA officials in the Western Cape are up in arms at the revelation by police of Mungalee’s NIA links, and Beukes’s testimony. They claim that if information was withheld from police, it was because information had previously leaked from police to both Pagad and gangsters. But they conceded that, if Mungalee was telling the truth, there had been a serious breach of agency rules.