Paul Kirk and Jaspreet Kindra
The National Intelligence Agency official responsible for recruiting Sifiso Nkabinde’s killer, Bruce Mhlongo, into the intelligence fold is Andre Pruis, a senior operative who works from the agency’s offices in Pietermaritzburg.
This is one of several details of Mhlongo’s relationship with NIA that the Mail & Guardian established this week as Mhlongo continued testifying in the Pietermaritzburg High Court against six other men he allegedly recruited to kill Nkabinde in the KwaZulu-Natal town of Richmond in January 1999. Mhlongo has turned state witness at least three times before.
The M&G reported last week that when Mhlongo was arrested in connection with the assassination he was in possession of a sophisticated recording device belonging to the NIA. Investigators from the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions said Mhlongo had worked as a part-time agent for the NIA on several operations, raising questions about why the NIA should be linked to an alleged political assassin.
The NIA this week confirmed that the tape recorder belonged to it, adding that if Mhlongo had been working for the agency he had not done so with the correct authorisation from the NIA’s command structures.
Police sources said this week that the investigators who arrested Mhlongo made no attempt to transcribe the tape that was in the device, but handed it over to the NIA within hours of his arrest. NIA operatives, including Pruis, were on the scene very shortly after Mhlongo’s arrest, the police sources confirmed.
The M&G has been unable to make contact with Pruis. Dennis Nkosi, the head of the NIA in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, said this week it would not be appropriate for him to comment on any alleged links between the NIA and Mhlongo. Said Nkosi: “It is not appropriate for me to comment on this matter. But what I can say is that if Mhlongo was involved with the agency it was on a one-to-one basis. It was not properly sanctioned and it was not with the approval of management. I am aware of the claim by the police that Mhlongo had a tape recorder belonging to us, but cannot comment on this.”
The NIA is apparently conducting an inquiry into how Mhlongo came to be an agent. At the time of Mhlongo’s arrest in August last year the agency conducted an investigation to establish who gave him NIA property in the form of the micro-cassette recorder he was arrested with.
Last week Mhlongo initially denied any link to the NIA, testifying in court that he did not even know what the letters stood for. But in subsequent cross-examination this week, Mhlongo confirmed he had been in possession of the recording device, and that he had met NIA operatives.
Mhlongo claimed in court he had been given the micro-recorder by a soldier whom he identified as “Shoba”. Sources within military intelligence said this week the only soldier whom Mhlongo could have been referring was a Major – then captain – Shoba from military intelligence.
Mhlongo claimed Shoba had approached him in March last year and introduced him to a “Mr Pacer” who Mhlongo claimed was the head of the NIA in Pietermaritzburg. It is understood the man Mhlongo met was in fact Pruis – whose name he apparently could not pronounce.
Military intelligence sources said this week the recording device was of a type used almost exclusively by the NIA.
Meanwhile, a feud between two top investigators probing the Richmond violence worsened as magistrate Ashin Singh vowed to take KwaZulu-Natal Scorpions boss Chris MacAdam to court for unfair labour practices.
Singh, a magistrate who was seconded to the Scorpions from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, claims his former boss bungled an investigation into the Ndabazitha massacre. The killing of 11 African National Congress supporters took place the day Nkabinde was killed, apparently in retaliation for the United Democratic Movement strongman’s death. MacAdam in turn claims Singh was interfering with investigations into the killing and fired him for this.
The real killers have never been brought to book – the soldiers originally arrested for the massacre have had charges against them dropped after it emerged they had been implicated on the basis of flawed ballistics evidence.
Singh was fired three days after he informed MacAdam the soldiers were innocent and offered the names of other suspects. The M&G is in possession of the names of the alleged killers, who include close associates and family of Nkabinde.
This week Singh told the M&G he would be taking MacAdam to the Labour Court, but he did not intend pressing criminal charges against MacAdam as “it would be a waste of time. [He] is clearly not prepared to entertain the truth.”
At present Singh is being prosecuted by MacAdam for alleged espionage. The charges relate to a tape recording that MacAdam contends Singh leaked to the media and on which MacAdam is heard to defame several top policemen and his own boss, Bulelani Ngcucka. Singh declined to discuss the case, but the M&G has confirmed that the tape was not obtained through espionage-related activities.
On the day MacAdam fired Singh, MacAdam apparently threw a number of Singh’s possessions at him in a rage, including his dictaphone that MacAdam had used to dictate details of charges being investigated against top policeman Director Eric Nkabinde. On this tape MacAdam is heard to claim Ngcucka is not aware of what is going on on the ground. He also calls Eric Nkabinde a “dirty rotten bastard”.
The M&G has confirmed this is the tape that was leaked to the media. But Singh was not the only one to have a copy – the South African Police Service may also have had one. Members of the police inspectorate had listened to the tape while investigating a case of crimen injuria that Eric Nkabinde laid against MacAdam.