In June MPs heard that domestic covert collection activities had stopped in 1996 – they were lied to Howard Barrell Defence force intelligence has continued to collect information covertly inside South Africa despite a ministerial undertaking to Parliament that it ceased doing so in late 1996. Its covert domestic intelligence activities have included surveillance and infiltration operations against People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) in the Western Cape over the past year, the maintenance of scores of undercover agents in communities across the country, and electronic surveillance of telephones. Following defence intelligence’s recent approaches to journalists to provide it with information and analysis, the Mail & Guardian can now reveal that defence intelligence’s directorate of overt collections has also recently been seeking similar relationships with a range of South African NGOs. The NGOs approached are those that defence intelligence believes may be able to throw some light on developments within the 14 members states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
On June 21 this year Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota told Parliament in response to a question from Democratic Party MP James Selfe that “the South African National Defence Force [SANDF] stopped domestic covert collection activities in December 1996”. Lekota added this was “because of allegations of SANDF members being involved in criminal activities”. But, within the past year, members of 5 Reconnaissance Commando, the sharp end of defence intelligence, have been involved in covert surveillance and infiltration operations against those members of Pagad believed to have been responsible for acts of terrorism in the Western Cape, according to well-placed M&G sources. Defence intelligence also maintained a significant covert collection operation in mainly communities across the country until early 1999 – that is, for more than two years after the supposed cessation of such activities – according to information in the possession of the M&G. This operation involved scores of many black former soldiers from the old apartheid-era South African Defence Force as well as former Bantustan armies. They were posted in their communities out of uniform and under the cover story that they were civilians. They were tasked with collecting information and reporting clandestinely back to defence intelligence. The agents, trained in the early 1990s, were known by their commanders as seekatte. The operation ended only in January 1999, the M&G has been told. Since the operation was wound down and the agents have returned to uniform, a number have experienced serious difficulties in reintegrating themselves into their communities. They have encountered considerable suspicion and hostility. Defence intelligence has also been involved in telephone tapping since December 1996. In 1997, it got permission for 13 new telephone taps and for another 17 existing telephone intercepts to be renewed. In 1998, five more telephone taps were approved. Its tapping of telephones ended only in 1999, according to a response to a parliamentary question by Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna in March this year. It is not known if it has mounted any telephone intercepts this year. “As always, there is a danger of lines of authority and accountability becoming blurred in the intelligence community,” Selfe said this week. “In light of revelations about media personalities being approached, we need to be extremely careful that military intelligence in particular sticks to its mandate, which is to gather intelligence in the field for our military forces, and to leave the business of internal surveillance and intelligence-gathering against enemies of the state to the intelligence agency that is responsible – in our case, the National Intelligence Agency,” Selfe added.
A Ministry of Defence representative did not deny any of the M&G’s information. In a statement from Pretoria on Thursday, the ministry merely said: “The SANDF do in certain exceptional circumstances, relevant to legal obligations of the SANDF and/or specific deployment needs, collect information beyond prescribed parameters, as such information may be relevant for use in our primary or secondary tasks.” It said that all SANDF intelligence operations were “within the parameter” of the law. “However, the whole question of the role and place of the intelligence communities in South Africa is currently under review and as such we are awaiting the report from the Moerane Commission.”