Howard Barrell
Vusi Mavimbela’s propulsion into the top post at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA)is a further attempt by President Thabo Mbeki to give the intelligence community some much-needed coherence and to put it where he wants it: near the centre of the policy-making process.
The appointment of Mavimbela, Mbeki’s former special adviser on intelligence, is also thought to be the first of a number of changes expected at intelligence services. The changes are intended, among other things, to put a new regime in charge at the troubled Department of Home Affairs, which Mbeki and his advisers see as a key component in the security apparatus.
Business Day this week publicised indications that Mbeki would soon appoint Billy Masetla, chief of the South African Secret Service (Sass), which gathers foreign intelligence, as director general of home affairs to replace disgraced Albert Mokoena. Sipho Pityana, director general of labour, who is known to want a fresh challenge, is among those tipped for Sass. So too is Linda Mti, head of the national intelligence co-ordinating committee.
Mavimbela replaces Sizakele Sigxashe, nearing retirement age. Sigxashe’s period as director general of NIA, which gathers domestic intelligence, has been unhappy. Sigxashe’s retention as a special adviser to Minister of Intelligence Joe Nhlanhla is a fig leaf that does not obscure what insiders say has been a breakdown in confidence between the two.
Mavimbela (44) will take over an unfocused and demotivated NIA. Sass and the directorate of military intelligence, are also experiencing difficulties, though these are said to be less serious than the NIA’s.
This state of affairs prompted an intelligence insider to remark last week: “South Africa can hardly claim to have an intelligence capability at the moment.” He added that it was doubtful that South Africa could afford the proliferation of intelligence agencies it now had – just added to with the creation of the Scorpions anti-crime unit.
Mavimbela’s priorities will be to give the NIA a vision and focus, and to meld his staff – from the different intelligence cultures of the apartheid-era government and of the African National Congress – into an effective whole. Administrative skills are likely to be the crucial factor in his attempts.
Whether he succeeds or fails, Mavimbela, a long-time Mbeki loyalist, will bring the NIA closer to Mbeki, who sees a key role for the intelligence community in policy formulation. Economic and security issues dominate his policy agenda.
In the post-Cold War era, national security assessments have tended to de- emphasise foreign military threats and, instead, highlighted the threats from foreign-derived syndicate crime and population displacement and migration. One consequence of this is to focus attention on the Department of Home Affairs, the issuer of passports and identity documents and decision-maker on immigration issues.
The direct role Mbeki reportedly intends taking in the management of the Scorpions underscores the threat the government identifies from criminal activity.
Opposition leaders, however, identify a different kind of threat in Mbeki’s absorption in intelligence matters. James Selfe, Democratic Party spokesperson on intelligence, said this week he saw “worrying parallels with 1979”, when PW Botha came to power.
“Then we had a president with a big idea, ‘total strategy’; now we have a president whose big idea is ‘African renaissance’. And anyone not in complete agreement with the idea is isolated as unpatriotic or hostile,” said Selfe. “Both men also like to centralise power and use their intelligence services to help formulate their own political purposes.”
Mavimbela, the new head of the NIA, is a political product of the uprisings in Soweto and elsewhere in 1976. He interrupted his studies at the University of Zululand that year to join the ANC in exile. One of the brighter of the ANC’s new recruits, he led a contingent of ANC youths to Moscow, where he completed a diploma in social studies and radio journalism in 1978. The next year, he led another group of ANC exiles to former East Germany, where he completed a diploma in intelligence work, security and information processing.
Between 1982 and 1986, Mavimbela worked in the ANC’s national youth secretariat in Lusaka. There he was part of a golden group of bright, younger exiles close to Mbeki, then the ANC’s rising star.
In 1986, Mavimbela underwent a commander’s course in Moscow in “military and combat work” (MCW) – an insurrectionary schema for a co-ordinated assault on state power by a revolutionary movement. An important component of MCW is intelligence work on the enemy’s armed forces.
Mavimbela then became personal assistant to Joe Jele, secretary of the internal political committee, a key ANC operational organ at the time. Using the nom de guerre Klaus Maphepha, he dealt with underground work and strategic perspectives.
In the late 1980s, he volunteered for deployment to Swaziland, then the most difficult “forward area” in which ANC exiles were operating. There, he acquitted himself well.
“Vusi’s paid his dues,” said a former exile with no love of the man. “He’s tough, very brave.”